kevin zelhart
Aug 8, 2017 · 1 min read

Don’t quite see where the accusation that I am pretending to deny the presence of women in any area of engineering, as no such premise has been forwarded. It also illustrates the issues faced when one attempts to have a discussion of such issues. And though women’s one time dominance of software engineering may be true, software engineering is but one field of engineering. In my career, I have had the pleasure of working with around a dozen such individuals who were development type engineers. I make that distinction, as a sad fact with all too many women in engineering get placed as sales engineers, and in some (not all) cases they are used as eye candy to get the contract, then they would be switched off to the next prospect. Pissed me off as the female engineers I worked closely with closely with were very good, this tactic, to me was rather demeaning of the women involved, and it harmed those doing development work.

In general I think we do all a disservice when we assign someone to being a part of this or that group instead of treating them as an individual who may share common traits with many but each has a degree of uniqueness. We sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that everyone’s though processes are the same, and make some very bad decisions based on that assumption. I know my wife’s method of thinking differs drastically from mine, and it frustrates us both at times, however, we usually reach the same conclusions.