Ada Lovelace Day

I'm dusting off the blog for Ada Lovelace Day - fulfilling my pledge to join bloggers around the world in appreciation of women who excel in technology.

As a woman who has enjoyed a loooong career in technology, I'm taking this moment to say thank you to all the women I've worked with over the years. I can't think of a single one who isn't exemplary. In the crazy-quilt tapestry of my technical career, the women I've worked with have all been exceptional, few and far between, the sparkle in the fabric.

Before I get to these fabulous women, one short detour to thank two men who are responsible for my own membership in the community of women in technology...

I count the beginning of my career as my 1981 internship with IBM, in Poughkeepsie, New York. My courses in mechanical drafting (the pencil and T-square kind) landed me an internship with the Mechanical Design Automation group, which set standards for mechanical design work done within IBM. The move to Computer Aided Design (CAD) was underway, and I set about learning to produce isometric views of widgets on a 2D drafting package called CADAM, produced by Lockheed. I also learned to write documentation using the tag language GML (a precursor to SGML and XML), blithely unaware of the future of these fun tools and toys I was tinkering with.

No women worked with me during my internship, and to be honest I didn't really notice. My future as a woman in technology was cemented one morning when I was happily typing some GML tagged documentation at the green screen in front of me. A senior staff member walked up behind me and asked if I would enter (type) a large stack of paper documentation into the system for him. Even after all these years I distinctly remember furrowing my brow for a moment, then I smiled and took the paper from him.

Later that day I stopped by my manager's office and stammered a request to ask him a question. He asked me what was on my mind, and I told him that I'd been asked to do some typing... and I wasn't sure if that was the type of assignment I should be working on. I can't remember exactly what I said after that, but I know it involved a reference to my Dad and that he didn't send me to IBM to type for people...

The senior staff member was summoned to the office, given a lecture about handing off typing to the college intern, and the stack of paper disappeared. I can still remember my mixed feelings of shock and awe at the outcome. I will never forget Dick Merrill for that moment in my early career - it gave me the tiny seed of the ego I would need to continue my career in technology for the coming decades. It goes without saying that I will never forget Dad as well, for the inspiration to speak up (and for building me a little drafting table when I was young).

My internship came to a close, and I was determined to finish my degree as quickly as possible and go right back to IBM. I landed in Sterling Forest, New York, as a mainframe product programmer for IBM's computer integrated manufacturing products. I was the only woman programmer in my department for the first few years of my career, but I remember looking up to Helene, who managed another development team in our area, and Pat, who was a senior programmer in yet another department. Oh, and Beverly, our 'code librarian'... in those days the librarian was an actual person who administered the source code control system. Once we submitted our batch compiler jobs and verified everything was working as designed, we dutifully handed our listings over to Beverly for filing.

The military discipline of product development at IBM gave me a solid grounding in software engineering. IBM also put me through nearly 560 hours of classroom training on programming, system internals, and team development that I still think of as 'the basics' to this day. But, in the early 90's IBM offered to buy out employees who were willing to depart, and I was young and footloose enough to take the money and run.

My path from IBM led to the 'shrink wrap' PC software industry, and I joined MapInfo Corporation in 1992 just prior to the IPO of the company. Again, although they were few and far between, I was in the company of some extraordinary women - Kim, Sharon, Marilyn, Elizabeth-

The burst of tech IPOs led me straight into the tech bubble in the mid 90's, when I moved to Boston with my husband and joined the technology wing of a management consulting company, Renaissance Solutions. Companies like Renaissance and Boston Consulting Group were changing the way that software was delivered to corporate America. Rapid prototyping, iterative development, 'agile'... aggressive, sometimes visionary. Bringing together young Harvard MBA's and bright technical types (like me!) made for a whirlwind learning experience with Fortune 500 companies (Lucent, Monsanto, AT&T...) as our classrooms. I still keep in touch with Patty-

And, after awhile, I hung out my own shingle as 'Paul Software, Inc.' and enjoyed my Boston consulting circles and adventures in the tech bubble.

The end of the tech bubble led me to Microsoft; I joined the Microsoft's Financial Services Group as a senior consultant at the turn of the century. Given I'd made the switch from mainframe programming to shrink wrap PC products and Windows development at Renaissance, going to work for Microsoft was the ultimate career move for me. Again, the women were few and far between but all extraordinary in so many ways - powerful, capable, brilliant. Tracy, Patti, Natalie, and my dear friend and former manager, Kimberly.

But wait, there's more (goodness, I've been doing this a long time). Travel weary, I departed Microsoft in 2004 to pursue my first operational IT role, responsible for the business applications at a local reinsurance company, Scottish Re. I was also responsible, for the first time, for managing and mentoring some phenomenal younger women in technology. And, for the first time after over 20 years in my field I saw the benefits of working with a truly diverse team of both men and women in IT. Heather, Melandee, Tonya, Emily, Joyce, Abigale, Catherine, Jasmina, Shri, Paula...

I learned so much from them all.

Scottish Re was something of a bellwether for the current economy, with M&A activity orchestrated by Bear Stearns, and substantial investments in securities based on subprime loans. I departed as the stock tanked, inspired to go back to school for my MBA to make sense of it all, and to become more than 'just an IT person'. I've been in night school since then, and am on track to graduate at the close of this year.

Going back to school has been a fantastic (ok, grueling) experience. It's amazing to see the young, and not so young, women in my finance and economics courses wielding Black-Scholes option pricing and statistical analysis tools in classes where women are finally not so few and far between. I'd like to thank all these women, too, because they're evidence that Ada Lovelace and all the extraordinary women who participate in technology have helped make it less extraordinary for women to apply themselves in any field.

Good grief, I'm only halfway through my career!

After giving roughly a decade to mainframe programming, and more to Microsoft platforms, we're now the proud owners of a Mac mini. I've set my sights on iPhone development (although my husband has now beat me to the punch by writing his first application for our sons' Nintendo DS handhelds). I just want to make sure I'm not 'just another MBA'.

And, heaven help me, I think my son wants to be a video game developer. When the time comes, I'll ask him to take a look at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where they have a terrific game development curriculum taught by the talented Dr. Tiffany Barnes.

Thank you, to all these women who have been such extraordinary inspirations, colleagues and friends-

Minsky Moments in IT

According to the Wall Street Journal (In Time of Tumult, Obscure Economist Gains Currency) we're having a Minsky moment in the financial markets: "...At its core, the Minsky view was straightforward: When times are good, investors take on risk; the longer times stay good, the more risk they take on, until they've taken on too much...". At some point, we're reminded that the odds are usually stacked against the gambler. Taking on too much risk, whether from buying more house than you can afford (or being coerced into doing so), or investing in high risk hedge funds for the promise of a 30% gain, is a gamble. It's seductive to fall back on natural optimism and believe that house prices and investments will continue to appreciate indefinitely, or that we'll see the drop coming in time to get out with assets in tact. The longer we're rewarded with gains, the more risk we're willing to take - until the bets are called in. A Minsky moment.

Minsky could have been a great IT executive. Of course, he would have helped us avoid the tech bubble of the late 90's, which was yet another example of his economic perspective. But, what if he had worked with the fledgling technology consulting industry during the 90's? Companies like Cambridge Technology Partners came alive during the bubble and changed the way that software was delivered to corporate America. I made the shift from being a 'product developer' to a 'high tech consultant' during these years. Looking back, the shift was largely about taking on more risk in technology delivery. Over the past fifteen years we've embraced so much risk in custom software delivery, it's no surprise we're seeing Minsky moments in corporate IT.

TIAA-CREF is currently in the midst of an IT Minsky moment SunGard, TIAA-CREF IT Slammed by Developers. It's not unusual to see executives and vendors begin to believe their own 'best case scenario', and willingly take on the risk of pushing code to production early (believing that it will just work, or issues can be patched post production). Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

I was very fortunate to be indoctrinated in software development discipline in the early 1980's at IBM, where I started my career as a mainframe product developer. At that time, most of the management team in my area were ex-military, and IBM put me through over 560 hours of classroom training in software development process, technology and team development. We had the luxury of 18 or 24 month product delivery cycles, but that time was well used - we had formal software estimation processes and extensive testing. Although we ran into and solved some very interesting problems, we had very little drama and few surprises. It was the complete antithesis of the high tech consulting I did in the 90's. From my perspective, custom software projects in corporate America are run more like hedge funds than military operations these days, so it's no surprise we're having Minsky moments in IT.

Do women hate IT? (what's to hate?)

Since all information, and most technology, comes with a point of view, here's mine:

• I'm female


• I've held technical jobs as a software product developer, technology consultant and IT manager over the past 25 years


• I've worked as an employee of Microsoft, and IBM (hoping for the trifecta by bagging a job at Red Hat someday)
  
• I compiled something today

So, I suppose this gives me a point of view on both Women and 'IT'. I see that there are quite a few other people who have views on this too, after reading comments on the Wall Street Journal Online edition article Do Women Hate IT?. What's all the fuss?

I don't know what people mean by the letters 'IT' these days. Does it mean you bang out source code for hours on end, while your keepers slide cold pizza under the door? Do you work with accountants and their arcane spreadsheet models in an effort to show them the wonders of data warehousing? Do you manage virtualized server farms with more compute power than most small countries? How can all these things pop into a woman's mind when she sees the letters 'IT', and, more important, how can Women possibly hate such a broad (no pun intended) concept? It's mind boggling. I certainly don't hate anything that falls under the umbrella of 'IT' these days, but I can't claim to represent all Women.

I don't want to get too philosophical here, but I'm not sure I know what 'hate' means in this context, either. I associate hatred with adrenaline and testosterone. Personally (not being privy to that much testosterone), I relate more to feelings of frustration, determination, creativity and optimism than hatred. I suppose that when a man writes about the declining ranks of women in technology fields it's natural for him to wonder if 'Women Hate IT', because hatred is natural in his point of view. After all, there are some awfully strong feelings about 'IT' out there - the linux community hates Microsoft (well, lots of people hate Microsoft), Steve Ballmer hates open source, hard core java programmers hate .NET. It's a testosterone driven industry.

As a woman, I view female brain drain in technology as a great loss. I'd like to think that a female author would treat the complex reasons for the exodus with some insight rather than boiling everything down to something as primal and thoughtless as hatred. "Women Hate IT" - that must be the answer.

I don't think classic 'IT' is a great career choice any more. The field is so broad that it requires specialization - as a programmer, infrastructure expert, security expert, networking expert, business intelligence analyst, program manager, sales support engineer, or any number of technology-related roles. Some of these jobs are more easily offshored than others, so if you like banging out code while someone slides pizza under the door, you compete with the masses in India and China. Likewise, if you make your living in 'corporate IT' you're better off as an an employee of IBM or EDS than a bank or retail business. Banks and large retailers outsource their buildings' electrical and plumbing maintenance, and 'IT' is going the way of the rest of the infrastructure. In my view, the best 'IT' jobs are in true software companies, where it really is a core business to create technology products.

Despite the challenges of 'IT', I do love technology. I play with databases and XML dialects and tinker with Silverlight to see if I think it's a viable contender to Flash. I help my kids make multimedia stories on Webkinz. I'm happy to live in a world where I can learn about a new technology, nearly every day. But that brings me back to the article - maybe it's just that I love technology but don't love the environment that I contend with in order to make my living at it. That's a bit different.

After 25 years making my living in technology, I'm going back to school for an MBA and may go on for a PhD. I enjoy Economics and Finance just as much at technology, and I appear to be pretty good at more than just 'IT'. As much as I hate being a statistic, I'm probably going to support the numbers pointing to the drop of Women in 'IT'. Does that mean I 'hate IT'?

No, maybe it just means I'd like to try something new...

When I landed my first job at IBM, right out of college, my father told me I was set for life and I'd never have to work for another company again. 'Cradle to grave' companies and a gold watch after 25 years... times have certainly changed. After 25 years in my field, I now look forward to the second half of my career. Working in 'IT' requires the ability to learn and absorb information quickly - I think it's an excellent preparation for my next career.

Me, I love 'IT' - technology is everywhere in my home, my life, my work, and family entertainment. Who wouldn't love it? Or, better yet, how could anyone hate it?