As I was contemplating the problem of few women in IT, I approached my friend Mateusz Sławiński, a Talent Manager here at Monterail. We had a long conversation that yielded some eye-opening (at least for me) conclusions. This blog is more or less a distilled essence of our conversation augmented with research that I had a lot of help with from my female colleagues. Thank you!

When I was a sophomore at college studying communication, I was hired as a public relations intern in a public relations agency—the choice seemed the most obvious path I could have taken at that point. As is often the case with first jobs straight out of college, I felt it underutilized my skills and didn’t reflect my true potential. That’s a feeling you often get as a rookie.

To put things briefly, my first year working in PR mostly involved a schedule filled to the brim with tasks that weren’t in any way relevant to my interests. Luckily for me, I’ve been tech-savvy and a bit of a nerd (yeah, right, a bit) ever since I can remember. Therefore, soon after quitting my nightmare job I managed to land a dream job in marketing in IT.

Only when I finally said goodbye to my first job, I noticed that businesses such as PR agencies are often dominated by women. By the time I quit, the company I left had a single man and seven women on staff. I worked in one of the most feminized industries in the world. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 71% of the Public Relations workforce in the USA are women.

As I shifted from PR to IT, I found myself in a completely new situation. According to BLS research data quoted above, women currently make up only 25% of the computing workforce in the US even though they account for 57% of the total workforce in America.

#it #culture