Women in IT (Aug 3). Online freedom of speech (Aug 5th)

[Andrew Hammond]

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Sacha Chua wrote:

> If anything, it's probably harder for foreign-born IT professionals to
> make it here, and _particularly_ hard for women. You think women in
> technology have to deal with bias and stereotype? I get compliments on
> my English all the time.

1) Any non-native speaker who can master the grotesquely complex and
ugly language that is English deserves the compliment. I suspect that
others feel the same way.

2) I like it when pretty women smile at me. I think there are other guys
who like it too. To get smiled at by pretty women, I sometimes try to
say nice things to them. I doubt I'm alone in following this tactic.
You're a pretty woman and honest compliments about a skill are innocuous...

> I have so far managed to resist the urge to
> tell people I got perfect scores on the verbal portions of my GRE and
> other standardized tests.

Wow. Uh... I can swear in Russian pretty good...

> If people are getting hung up on language,
> how are they going to trust my technical skills?  ;) 

Er... the more I work in this field, the more I am convinced that
communication skills are at least as important as technical skills. If
it's an interesting problem, then it will certainly require some
research and probably some collaboration too. The value of the solution
will in large part be a function of how it is communicated, from
comments in the code through to presentations at a conference. All of
these things are to some degree language related.

Drew
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