<p>Whats the best track to project managing? That's really what I want to be, I'm a very social guy with all sorts of friends and have the ability to see how subsystems unteract to form a sytem...</p>
<p>Just today, while driving to Boston, I listened to a piece featured on BBC radio about the value of empathy as a business trait...and how valuable it is becoming....as we Americans move the more mundane computer programming tasks offshore....and the show highlighted that the empathy trait tends to be more prevelent in females....and how some males in the workplace are emulating female behaviors in an attempt to lead with their empathy skills. </p>
<p>I mention this as a reply to this thread....primarily because a female engineer might be a perfect example of a better job candidate long term....they understand the customer's needs/reqmts more readily....according to this story. I have been in IT for a long time...and the number of females has decreased of late...I have my own theories, including the rate of change makes it harder for women to keep up, because we have so many extra curricular responsibilities overall. Not trying to be inflammatory here... just my observation after many, many years in this space. A lot of IT work is done at nite and on weekends....and families tend to conflict with avaiability. Same reason Summers tried to say women can't handle the research/writing part of being a professor. It is rarely a case of ability, more one of bandwidth to do the work. IMHO....</p>
<p>cwatson, best track to project managing is to actually start taking ownership for some projects. I took a course on it several years ago.....the 1 takeaway I got was that every project has a beginning, a middle and an end. Continue with that approach to each phase.....diving the beginning tasks into a subset beginning, middle and end....where the end of the beginning links to the beginning of the middle.....beginning, middle and end, where the end of the middle now leads to the beginning of the end.....you can continue to take any one layer down another level of 3's if needed.....I have found this to be a helpful approach to all those projects in my life...both work related and personal.....and it can be a great guide to staying on track for project end time frame/date.</p>
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A lot of IT work is done at nite and on weekends.
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While this is true for many IT positions revolving around production system implementation/maintenance it's generally not true for software development and many related positions (including project management) which tend to be more of a normal schedule with extra hours around deadlines sometimes (as in many kinds of jobs). </p>
<p>One nice thing about CS depending on one's position is the flexible hours. I don't really care if people in my group start work at 5am or at 10am and in many cases they can work from home if need be. Of course, flexibility of hours and telecommuting policies vary from company to company but the nature of the work lends itself to it.</p>
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"At colleges across the country, female engineering students are rarer than truffles. Youngstown State University this month reported that 93 of 971 engineering students are women. Case Western Reserve has 201 women among its 1,908 engineering students. Those percentages are pretty typical anywhere." I can't believe that the numbers are so low.
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<p>The situation is MORE skewed than these numbers indicate.</p>
<p>First, there are differences between colleges. Women who are candidates to finish an engineering degree generally are good at other subjects more than men, and are a relatively precious commodity in college admissions, so there tends to be an upward brain drain (similar to academically qualified minorities). This partly explains why second and third tier schools have only 10 percent women engineers as cited in the article; some of their female student body moved one tier higher.</p>
<p>Second, there are differences between engineering majors. Women are less likely to enter mechanical engineering, for example. i.e. the male-female discrepancies in science interests have correlates in engineering. This isn't necessarily a huge effect but it's there. </p>
<p>Third, the disproportion of (mostly East) Asians is much higher among women than men in engineering at undergraduate level. It can easily run as high as 80 percent of the females in many engineering and math/physics classes. The more advanced the class, the more the disproportion. Asian men are also represented beyond population level but not at 60-80 percent of these majors.</p>
<p>Yeah, and being the only guy in my Eng Lit and Art classes in School now, I don't think you really notice any difference when you're being taught.</p>
<p>i'm really enjoying this thread. its almost 1am. I just finished working (oh yes, there is that flexible schedule ;-). I'm a techie, a woman, and short.</p>
<p>unfortunately, I'm not living up to my name.</p>