Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax!eileenp%teklds.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET
From: eileenp%teklds.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET (Eileen Phelan)
Newsgroups: comp.society.women
Subject: Re: Preponderance of women as tech-support people
Message-ID: <5730@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 7 Sep 88 17:47:34 GMT
References: <5697@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
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Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts)
Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu
Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu


In article <5697@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> roy@phri (Roy Smith) writes:
>
>	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.

I manage a customer support group.  Of your theories, 1 is the most
appropriate.  There is another reason you don't mention:  women in this
society are socialized to be more helpful and therefore do well in support
roles.  This is *not* to say men can't do them or that there is anything
inherently sex-related about the job.

In general, tech support is a high-pressure job with a high burnout rate.
Tech support can be organized so it is a pleasant job.  We have worked
hard in our group to make it interesting, but then, we also do QA, training,
software and hardware development, and anything else that sounds interesting.
My group is presently all male; the women have left for even more interesting
:-) jobs.

Eileen Phelan
eileenp@teklds.TEK.COM