As a guy, I hope my contribution here will be welcome.  :)

I’ve been passionate about helping more women into the technology work force since my college days.  Many of the best engineers that were weeded out of my university compsci program were women who could not deal with the cowboy, win at any cost culture.  As a result, most of the small final number of graduates were arrogant, bossy, asocial men who argued needlessly and had very closely held, calcified opinions. 

Since then, the course of my career has taken me from a software engineer leading to the corporate exec I somehow managed to become today.  During that time, the characteristics of those great women engineers that were weeded out of my university compsci program were precisely those attributes I’ve needed to get projects done well; collaboration, sharing, empathy, self awareness and openness.  Granted not all women engineers have these characteristics, but they are more likely to.  Combined with strong engineering skills, this makes for a powerful combination. 

Over the last (oh my god) 20 years, I’ve been involved in multiple projects to advance the cause of women in engineering.  From the Stone Center, thru MentorNet, and diversity programs within the companies I’ve worked for, I’ve put a ton of energy into creating an environment and an acceptance for deeper diversity in the software engineering (at least) workforce. 

Now that I manage a fairly large group of very highly skilled software engineers with a fairly unique mission, I still find it difficult to hire highly qualified female candidates simply because I do not get the resumes.  This has to change, and I hope this site helps build a community that supports that change.

I am junior at Pacific University who has just started studying computer science.  I have totally changed my major from environmental studies to computer science so I will probably be a super-senior before I graduate.  But, I think computer science will take me further in a career than environmental studies especially since more women are needed in the tech industry.  I will be starting my first C++ class next spring and hopefully I like it and can understand it.  I have become more and more interested in computer science since I have been working at Intel as an intern.  The group I currently work in, is a technical marketing group for the WiMAX technology.  I’m sure you all know what WiMAX is right?  There are so many new and cool technologies out there like this which has got me very interested.

Corpguy, thanks for posting this opinion of yours, it gets me more excited in going for a computer science degree.  It sounds like you work at a big corporation like Intel where there are a lot of politics involved.  Do you?  My boyfriend and a couple other friends who work as Software Engineers have been telling me that as a woman, I would get a job so fast if I had the qualifications.  They’ve said that Intel is looking for more and more women because of the workforce diversity issue.

I do work at a Fortune 100 corporation.  As Tip O’Neill said, “All politics is local.” Every company has politics as an artifact of humans being in close proximity.  You just have to find a place with a politic that suits you.. :-)

Yes, high talent women in engineering will get offers from better organizations.  I can explain more about what I mean by this if people are interested.  Some orgs will hire women because of diversity quotas, others will hire because they recognize diversity is a factor in an organizations long term success.  The latter is where you want to be… And you’d be surprised at how many organizations now recognize this, and more come on board every year. 

And yeah, I know what WiMax is… :-) That’s a whole other story…