Geek Bait

I have a couple geeky things at my desk at work. They're like signals to the people who recognize them. A lot of people I've never met come by to compliment me on them and then we strike up conversation and learn we have something in common besides working together. That's that sort of networking bs the social media sites will tell you to do, but I just like meeting new people and flagging the geeky ones down with my signs. Plus I feel cool in an übergeeky sort of way using symbols in plain sight that are like a code to my comrades in geekitude.

Roll Initiative

What's better than picking out new dice? Perhaps the excitement and anticipation of time spent with friends and people you love doing something sure to be fun. It's the people that make something awesome, but it's the dice that lets them know you are serious.

Possession with intent of double-X chromosome

Just stumbled across an oldie but a goodie, how female stars succeed in new jobs from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge articles. Professor Boris Groysberg looked at top performing equity analysts as an easy to study profession whose yearly metrics he could compare before and after a change in employers. Because most equity firms were located within 1 mile of each other geographical changes would also have less of an affect.

 

What he found was star male analysts performance actually dropped after changing jobs while star female analysts maintained their performance. Because analysts tend to have the same clients and outside contacts after switching companies Groysberg hypothesized the first reason for why women do better as:

One is that they are more invested in external than in in-house relationships. There are four main reasons why star women maintain external focus: uneasy in-house relationships, poor mentorship, neglect by colleagues, and a vulnerable position in the labor market. External focus makes them more "portable" in terms of making a positive move, but can cause problems if they want to progress within their own organization, because you need a solid internal network and good political capital to get things done in organizations. Anyone who focuses mostly on external relationships will not have that.

So kind of depressing. Women do not have good mentors, internal contacts, or internal institutional support at their own companies. Moving to some other company where they don't necessarily know anybody any better than at their previous employer changes nothing for them. Not really a sign of progress I think. His second reason is a little disappointing, indicating that women do more due diligence in a job search to make sure they are not a token female and that they will have more institutional support whether as a female or just as a person.

I don't like hearing this argument that women don't go into higher paying professions like management because they "have more ethics" than men or don't go into science or engineering because they "choose better jobs" than men and that seems like the argument here. I mean at least we've moved on from "women make better secretaries" but it's like saying African Americans dominate professional basketball because they make better choices to get in as opposed to their white sports colleagues not that their white colleagues actually have more avenues of success available to them.

On a side note, being a lego fan I was looking for a cutesey lego picture to top this post and a google image search of "lego figure" is shockingly masculine. I'd say 98% of figures were male, with a few scantily clad female lego figurines popping up or a few female superheroes. I think I got one hit in the first five pages that was just a normal female figure(lego figures do not even have curves, do we really need to sexualize them as well?). No worries, I thought, this is probably selection bias from the sexist interwebs and hopped over to the lego shop. I search through their City series looking to find ordinary women doing ordinary things. Police, fire and rescue are an all male club it seems with one single police woman who works at the police station but doesn't appear to be a part of any of the units that leave. Transportation shows men only as travellers, city workers, officials and mechanics with a woman working a pizza shop, another of unknown occupation and one travelling with her family in a camper.

It seems we women do not fix or run anything but are only a part of larger sets where clearly there should be at least one woman so the population can procreate and not die out. Other sets are even more disappointing with no women dueling with knights or no women wielding swords, no women swimming underwater to fight the weird sea creatures of Atlantis, no women ninjas, and only a few specific character women in the movie sets (Harry Pottery, Star Wars, Prince of Persia). Okay I suppose some of the ninjas could be women, it's not like the lego figures lead to distinct body shapes, but I still expected a little better from a company from pinko-commi freewave socialist Denmark. Getting past the shear lack of numbers, I think of being a little girl and not getting to see people like me wielding swords or building things but instead being in castles wearing less than everyone else and needing to be rescued. Come on Lego, get it together.

Engineering Barbie

An EE/CE PhD (enough acronyms?) helped design the new barbie computer engineer look. I'll admit I'm a little disappointed. What with the laptop, smart phone, trendy t-shirt, square glasses, and leggings she might as well be a blogger or just an avid facebook user/tweeter. Then again "computer engineer" is a pretty broad category. Is she in industry? A PhD? A code monkey? A network engineer? A college professor? Thankfully the PhD they consulted got rid of Barbie's lab coat:

"That's not just typical attire," said Dr. Fitzgerald, who considers T-shirt and jeans to be standard wardrobe for professionals in her field.

 

Though an early idea from Mattel included the white lab coat, Dr. Fitzgerald and others discouraged it, she said, because it's more representative of scientists who work in wet labs surrounded by chemicals and potential spills.

Again I'm not sure where t-shirt and jeans is "typical" since it's hard to make generalizations about such a broad job title. Clearly a CE is probably not working with fluids all the time, but then again I see many a sparky (I mean EE) wandering around in the required static protection smocks when they're working with electrical equipment. And who wears leggings to work? I guess Barbie does. Maybe if you're a college professor that kind of crap flies, but hopefully Barbie doesn't have an office job.

 

I really would have rather seen Barbie a bona fide sparky (yeah yeah electrical engineer). Maybe you could take apart her smart phone or maybe she'd have a pink oscilloscope or something. Or better yet, a mechanical engineer. Then Barbie's pink corvette could come with an open-able hood and maybe a small plastic engine with a tiny hand crank so kids can see how a simplified engine works. A girl can dream, right?

Sprig Cleaning

So I updated my blogroll type links. If you're not on there, and you'd like to be, please leave a comment or email me or something. Yes I actually read all those blogs. I'm open to trying new things so if you read me and think I should read you let me know. If I've fat fingered your URL let me know that too.

 

Yes, that is a dinosaur playset. It's made out of sprigwood, some natural composite wood meant to be safe for kids. I'm not sure it's factually accurate that the little adventure dude has a 4x4, a fedora, and has made friends with some very happy looking dinosaurs (happy because their meals on wheels arrived?) But you have to admit the dinosaurs are adorable. You know you want the set, don't lie to me. Also, it's good inspiration for my personal mission of getting Jurassic Park released to blu-ray.