Next Gen Developer

People who aren't in the IT industry quite often ask me as a female in the industry why I chose it. So here are my reasons as a female become a female in IT at the moment:

1. You are one of a relatively small population of female technologists at the moment so you will get noticed in the industry.
2. If you are competitive then you have all the guys to compete against to be the best!
3. You have a fantastically good male: female ratio if you are a single female and can cope with the techie guys(see post on 10 reasons not to date a geek!).
4. You don't have to wear a skirt or dress in the office, in fact you are better off wearing trousers if you have to do any work in the dusty server room.
5. You can get away with being that cute, sexy, cheeky female techie. ;)
6. Technology is exciting, it doesn't fight back (too often) and it's great fun if you are problem solving type of person.
7. Females in IT are in the process of having their profile raised through events like BlogHer, Women in Technology and London Girl Geek Dinners
8. Working in the technology industry these days has never been more lucrative, and is always expanding. This is afterall the technology revolution.
9. Females in IT help to create a more human side to technology, and break the rules about geeks, and hopefully give geeks a better reputation. (and yes females in technology can be geeks too!)
10. Females in IT are fantastically good fun and every company should have them. They liven up the department and breathe new life into technology!

Now again, don't take this too seriously, as with 10 reasons not to date a geek this is just a bit of fun.

Last week Helen Duguid, formerly of Microsoft now working as an independant consultant had a chat with me about a few things last week and one of the books that she recommended to me was Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. To be totally honest I was a little scheptical at first. I thought, what can this book teach me that I don't already know, but then I decided that for Helen to recommend it so strongly that I should at least give it the benefit of the doubt, and I have to say I really was pleasantly surprised. Not only is it very well written and easy to read but it also makes a lot of sense. The test that goes with the book is very good too. I have done the Myers-Briggs psychometric tests before and OK they give an indication of the sort of person you are, but there are less descriptive areas in this sort of test.

My results on the Myers-Briggs test showed that I was an ENTJ type. What does that mean... well the letters correspond to types: Extraversion iNtuition, Thinking, Judging. To find out what this means you should go to the Myers-Briggs site.

The strengthFinder test showed that I was Futuristic, Strategic, Competition, Ideation, Achiever types.
Futuristic: People strong in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.
Strategic: People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
Competition: People strong in the Competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.
Ideation: People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.
Achiever: People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.

There is only one problem with this test... you have to buy the book to do it, however I think that in it's own way that is in fact more of a benefit than a drawback because it gives you the background to the test and then the ability to at least analyse and start using the new found information to make a difference. I was quite surprised to see how the two tests interlinked in some ways. I did the Myers-Briggs test back at University as part of my Masters of Enterprise degree course. Now something interesting to note there was that over 70% of the people on that course were ENTJ types, and they were MEnt students of many different subject areas from art, design, mathematics, engineering, medicine and technology. So in theory none of us had anything specific in common. However most of us seemed to be a very similar type. It would be very interesting to put a similar group of people through this test and see how those results came out. I wouldn't be surprised if they came out very similar to my results for most people who took the MEnt course at UMIST. I will be recommending it to the university.

Just to let people know that Wiki Wednesday is this wednesday and for those of you who would like to attend you can find info and the sign up page here. I would recommend this evening to anyone who wants to know more about Wiki's and also to those who currently use them and want to find out more about how they can be appied and usefully used within businesses. I look forward to seeing some of you there!