IT workers should WANT to be here on their own...
In the past 5-6 years I've read numerous articles about how schools and employers are working really hard to encourage Demographic X, Y or Z to join the IT world. Be it women, racial minorities, people with only three toes... whatever, it seems there is a general attitude that it is WRONG to let the people who WANT to be in IT to actually be in IT. We seem to have this really odd notion that we have to have absolutely equal proportions of women to men, of whites to blacks to hispanics to little green people with bad acne. Not having these equal ratios makes us IT people bad/racist/sexist/mean nasty people.
Here's a radical idea... now I know this will shake up a few people and might turn the world on it's head, but here goes....
DON'T TRY AND CONVINCE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T INTERESTED IN IT TO FOLLOW IT AS A CAREER!
In other words, if they want to be in IT because they enjoy IT, great... If they're not sure about the whole computer thing, then it's probably a good idea that they look for work elsewhere.
I'm tired of dealing with people in my job (and formerly while in school) who were only following IT because they thought they could make a ton of money, or because they were courted by some school to join their IT program and given scholarships. My cube mate where I work is in the IT dept same as me, she even went to the same University as I did and has the exact same degree as I do... yet if her computer freezes, she hasn't a clue. She can build a web page only with the help of a WYSIWYG editor, and forget asking her to use a command prompt. She hasn't the first clue about anything IT, yet she proudly says she works in IT. Can I get a job as an Air Traffic Controller and know nothing about what the field entails?
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not saying every woman or minority in the IT field is an incompetent jerk who hasn't a clue what computers were like before Windows 95. I work with some amazingly talented people across all the magical demographic pools that people like to draw statistics up about and make big political speeches regarding. My manager is a woman and she is an EXPERT in her field, no question about it. I know amazing coders, DBAs, network admins who are women, who are minorities in general. They're amazing not because they came from an underrepresented pool, they're amazing because they LOVE what they do.
That's just the thing with technology, you have to love it to work in it. The pay isn't as good as it used to be, the hours generally stink, you only get noticed when something goes wrong, it's stressful and the rewards can come few and far between if your upper management likes to cancel and shift around projects a lot. The only way you'll actually survive in this field is if you really really enjoy it. If you sorta enjoy it, or might not enjoy it, or are at all confused over whether or not this is the right field for you... then you probably shouldn't bother with it. This is as much for your good as it is for those of us still working here.
Since the efforts to encourage women into IT are fully ramped up, now we're starting to see reports on the relative percentage of women in IT dropping and that it's a huge cause for concern. We're down to something like 35% representation as of 2002 from 41% back in 1996. Hrrm... numbers were higher when the dot-com boom started, and lower after it crashed you say?
The article I'm refering to says it is harder for women to maintain their careers through ongoing skill development etc than men because women are shouldered with the burden of domestic responsibilities (i.e. taking care of the family). As a result, they're leaving the workforce in droves for opportunities that meet their work-life needs better. Supposedly this is because of some bad thing the IT field is doing. What it really is, is a case of personal choice. If you want to raise a family, you have to give up something else. You can't have your cake and eat it too in this case. Both are extremely time-consuming tasks, both are very important. You have to choose which one to make priority, and you can't blame the one for your failings in the other. This may be more doable in some fields than others... in IT where you have to constantly learn and update your skills, it's less doable. That is not the fault of employers or your coworkers, it's the nature of technology... it moves fast and you either keep up or get left in the dust.
I'm tired of having my field labled as sexist/racist/whatever because we don't bend over backwards enough to cater to the special interests and needs of every underrepresented group. IT has become very keen on merit and ability... if you know your stuff, come on in. If you don't, get out. We don't care who or what you are. It's about time we started forcing people to earn their way into the field again instead of handing out free passes to special groups. I'm tired of explaining elementary computing to people who supposedly have computing degrees and work with technology as their job. The next time I have to explain how to map a network drive to an IT worker, I may just have to shoot them.
End Rant