Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!roy@phri From: roy@phri (Roy Smith) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Preponderance of women as tech-support people Message-ID: <5697@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 3 Sep 88 14:41:41 GMT Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu Organization: Public Health Research Institute, NYC, NY Lines: 33 Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu I've noticed that when I call a computer company for tech support, I tend to get to talk to a woman more often than I get to talk to a man. I'm not talking about the first N levels of people you get to talk to (who are also mostly women) but when you finally get to talk to somebody who really knows what is going on. Why is that? I've got several theories: 1) Tech support is a shit job and women always get the shit jobs. I dismiss this one as being overly paranoid. Of course, the women who read this group may not agree with me. 2) Most computer types are men. Therefore, if you make most of the tech support people women, you get mostly man->women interactions. Men are less likely to rant and rave at a women than at another man, so by making the tech support folks women you cut down on having to deal with angry customers. 3) All the really smart people (men) are doing programming and system design, which are the jobs that require the most brains, and all the dumb women are left to talk on the phone. 4) All the really dumb people (men) are doing the programming, and system design so they need the really smart people (women) to solve customers' problems later, after the products have shipped. Personally, I think 2 is probably the right answer. Numbers 3 and 4 are just thrown in as equally cynical but opposite ways to look at the situation. Any comments? -- Roy Smith, System Administrator Public Health Research Institute {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net "The connector is the network"