I am the IT Guy

I got my first computer when I was in the first grade. It was a TI-99. My dad bought it at JC Penney in Ballou Park when they still had an electronics department and giant Sesame Street characters in the children's department. He bought it from a man who went on to open a well known computer business in town. They sold cartridges for it, similar to Atari games, but I never had any of those. I had books of code. Everything the computer did, I programmed it to do. I accomplished sophisticated tasks such as drawing ASCII cats or making the words BLAST OFF fly up the screen complete with sound effects.

From then on, computers were a part of my life and my education. I had more access to the computer labs in elementary school due to my involvement in the gifted program as well as technology focused education in the summer through the same program. I got my first desktop computer when I was about 14, a Tandy from Radio Shack with a COLOR dot matrix printer. I became a desktop publishing wizard. I made signs and fliers and cards and tee shirt transfers. I continued this trend in high school when I took a graphics class. On the weekends, my boyfriend, his brother and I built a computer. We would save up money, order parts and slowly assemble until we got the crowning glory... a modem. I was online. One of the first sites I found was the Internet Cello Society, of which I am still a member. At this point, I still was not considering tech as a career. I was focused on my music and, more importantly, no one told me it was even an option. My first semester in college, my roommate brought a computer and I paid for our internet service. Dial up. The college did not provide access at that time. My second year, they did. So, I befriended the IT work study and assisted in server maintenance and message board moderation. By then, I knew the music thing really wasn't going to work out. I had taken something I loved and beaten the life out of it until I didn't care if I ever played cello again.

I found myself back home and needing to take classes at the local community college. But, what? What did I like enough to make a career out of? Computers. I liked computers. I was better with them than most people I knew. Why not? So, I signed up for computer networking courses. I graduated and after a few month of working a job not in my field, I found one as a help desk analyst. I progressed through the ranks to assistant network analyst then network analyst. I installed, performed troubleshooting and repaired desktops, laptops, printers, servers and switches. I have managed Novell and Microsoft based networks. I have created and deployed group policies for network management. I devised ways to, instead of reactively battling spyware and viruses, to proactively defending against without restricting people from their day to day job functions. I was at the top of my game. I absolutely loved what I did.

Then someone told me that I couldn't do those things because I was a girl. My responsibilities started to change. More and more things were taken from my and given to people that I had trained to do those very same tasks. So, I made a change. New scenery, new chance to prove myself. AWESOME! Instead, I landed in an environment where the "senior tech" was intimidated by me. He took great pleasure in finding things that he knew that I did not. (For the record, one of the only things he ever found on me was that he had read Sherlock Holmes and I had not.) Lots of change took place in that situation, lots of turn over. New leadership came in to place and I was excited. This was my time to shine. This was my opportunity to get back to what I loved, tech work. At our first meeting, I was told that he had never had a woman work for him and he wasn't exactly sure what I did. From there, I was told I could help the only other woman in the department (data, not tech) plan parties. I've been reported for showing too much cleavage even though I am a very modest person, both personally and professionally. I've been shuffled off to work with the nursing program. I've been set aside to answer the phones because I have a nice personality. I've been relegated to putting the work the men are doing in to spreadsheets instead of actually helping with the work.

I am the IT guy. I am the one that knows how to fix your computer and keep things running so that you can do your job. But, I am not being allowed to do it and I am miserable. I am considering a career change because of it. I can no longer stand in the middle of meetings jumping up and down, raising my hand, yelling ME ME ME, I can do that, assign ME that project. To quote a friend, it's a "ridiculous misuse of assets!"

The feminist in me wants to stand and fight for any other woman that wants to go in to a non-traditional field. The human in me is tired of fighting the battle.