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I recently had this kind of conversation with several men from different directions and thought I would like to get an input from you as well.
It is about women in the workplace not wanting to invest time "after work hours" for their job as well as complaining to their significant others if they do.
I am in the lucky position to now do what my passion is. Which also means that it is possible to work with a client and send her or him a link / text in the middle in the night because it fits the project we are working on. I am not "still" working, but it is part of my life. (There is the discussion about separation of life and work and balance but let's leave that for another time).
I also had this when I still was employed. If I would see something interesting, I would forward it to somebody even if it was work related and I was 'off duty'. I always enjoyed reading books on business rather than novels, and never had this strict 'oh my god it is 5 o clock, I have to leave the building!". But it seems as if my kind of behaviour is odd - especially for a woman. It made me reflect on some of the conversations I had over the years and let me give you the following, (from my experience) very typical examples.
As I said, I like to hand out texts and links I come across. I never had a guy not say thank you and leave it at that, but women would complained to me, one even saying "when am I supposed to look at that - in my free time?!"; very loud for everybody to hear. Guess how often I gave her something again.
My brother took home for christmas a very thick book about his profession - not what he is doing now but what he could use tomorrow. I said that I am very proud of him that he actually does this, but a female friend of mine only had the reaction of "but it is christmas! he should be talking to you and the family!". He did and we had splendid conversations, but still there was some time slots where he just had time and read his book. But my friends position was, he should not even had brought it there. She would never do so.
When meeting with guys after work, there is no problem switching back and forth between work stuff and other stuff whereas women tend to enforce "this is work free time! Don't talk business! Let's do that tomorrow!" and get grumpy when you still slip back to work stuff as if this is offending - but this kind of time is the best time to do networking. So what do men do when they are between themselves? Network. What do they do when women are around? They don't because the women complain. Which loss is it? The womens.
If training is offended but it runs in the evening, the weekend, the women are more likely to complain about the unfair "use of their free time" and "but i have to do shopping / home work" whereas men just say "cool idea! when shall I be there?" and find another way to do shopping and homework. My former employee had a version where he would pay for the teachers and rooms and you with your free time, a good deal I thought. Most women where about "but it is my free time, I am not paid for this! Why should I go there?". To learn something, stupid? These are just a few examples where women pass on opportunities but later complain about being left out.
Take conferences as well. Yes of course it is annoying to travel a lot around, but the people I meet at conferences, the conversations and contacts I get out of it are worth it every time. There is never a discussion with a men about his - but always with women. (My favourite: But you could do something useful during that time, like working on your social life in Lübeck. Yeah right, as if there is much people to connect with here in my area of expertise.)
Also, even if this is not the how they want to spend their time, I am amazed how often they don't recognize the pattern. After all, men are not that complicated.
I remember vividly a female colleague complaining bitterly about her boss because he told her to show some more engagement in the work place and stay longer in the afternoon. She was referred to another colleague as good example. "But doesn't the boss see that I come at 7 in the morning and then leave at 16:30 in the afternoon already doing overtime! I should not be told to look at the other guy who comes at 8:55 and leaves at 18:30! I am the same time there!". Yes, true, but the boss comes at nine and usually leaves at 18:15.
And all he sees is that she leaves in the early afternoon where as the other guy is there when he comes and is still there when he leaves.
But what it boils down to is my feeling that a lot of women want to play the game in the work place by their own rules and even though they have all the right to do so - most men play by other rules. And they recognize when somebody else is "in the team" or "in another team".
What do you do when you have a new task / job? Do you give it to somebody who works like yourself and ticks like yourself or to somebody who 'refuses' to invest time in the job like you do?
It strikes me that a lot of women refuse a lot of possibilities. If all you do is your job or if you are paid to do that, how are you supposed to enhance your knowledge / network / experience? Yes, it would be nicer if we would be paid and easier and everything, but if a boss asks you to go on a work trip and the answer is "but I would miss my yoga class!" I assume you will not be asked again.
And if the men around you show that they work on their skills in the free time, you can refuse to do so - but when push comes to shove, you will not be picked, but the other guy who invested time. And showed that he played in "the same league". Talking to girls I see the tendency to pat each other on the back and say "of course you should not invest your free time! Right for you to do so!" whereas men tend to smirk and go their way - as women push themselves out of the race. And wonder why they do not get as far.
As I said, those are my experiences and they might be flawed, but I have had them over and over again. In a way, this is a game with rules. And as I like to say: If you want to play football, you have to train and work to play football. And not care about your cheerleader moves - because then all you will be is a cheerleader. But never a player on the field.
Thoughs? Comments?
28.01.07 - cruel to be kind, the small things - 5 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
I know, the year is only some days old but if I would collect all the stuff which has happened over the last two weeks ... *sigh*. It started with a broken gas thermea and ended last with me missing a stair step and now having a hurting, thick knee. At the moment I would be thankful for just a break from that streak ... At least I am travelling with rail not with my car.
Oh and did I mention that my main german blog is broken because the provider decided to switch something on which will make the blog software impossible to run? I have been unsatisfied with the provider since they changed owners two years ago and I am with them since 98 ... so I have to change servers with an unwilling incompetend provider and I am not even at home nor do I have access to those needed documents, passwords and alike. Did I mention that I will need to recode some patches for the new environment and make adjustments on a core level?
if you ever met me you will know that I am not much of an esotheric person, far from that. But there is something about good and bad energy which just fits at the moment - event though good things happen to me at the moment, the negative ones hit so hard, that the good ones cannot make up for it, even if they are plenty ...
14.01.07 - Things I would like to see - 5 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Ben Metcalfe has splitted up his blog towards a
personal blog and a
more serious one - and he
explains in here why.
I find this whole splicing up and getting back together annoying and at the same time I totally agree with what he says.
I struggle with a similar reason (add two languages as well) and have not found a decent workaround for myself how I want to use the different media / possibilities as I see fit .. and much more would like to see more tools being used to tailor what ever you want to see on your side.
Because I have no clue what your preferences are. They may be very strange to me. So how can I decide how to split it up when every one is different?
Anyhow, wanted to spread a little link love. :)
09.01.07 - the small things - 4 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Mark the dates:
BarCampLondon2 Feb 17-18
and a
Girl Geek Dinner for Feb 21 which might get bigger and more international because of the "Future of Web Apps" conference which starts on 22nd! :o)
Tag(s): girlgeekdinner, barcamplondon, barcamp
08.01.07 - conference - 8 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Okay, if somebody can explain to me how I can send messages to twitter without having to pay SMS fees I am willing to be pushed by my dear friends into this new nonsense of hype tools. *g* Well, maybe just for reading them.
In case you do not know:
Twitter is a site where you can sms to some short blast and it will be distributed back to your friends. As it seems there should be a IM version as well.
It got me thinking about how different we treat our communication nowadays. At least with most people I am dealing with on a friend basis I do see a longing for something open for all - but still closed enough to not be open for everyone. You know. Like in those old days when you had your favorite IRC channel?
IRC channels had the benefit of that you kind of know the people who are in there and if you are a regular, you know who to deal with. And what this will mean if you post something in there. Like known ground. And I am missing that.
It is a miracle to me how most messengers can figure out the normal 1:1 chat in a nice way but totally miss on what IRC channels have been for a long time. If you look at the "feature sets" for channel communication in skype and other IM clients - they are rotten. But why is that bad?
Because I do not want to talk to a person 1:1 every day. Or I may love to chat with somebody all the time - but the other person might not want to. It is intrusive. Channels on the other side are more like "hey, I have to say something, somebody wanna talk?". You can throw out ideas, comments, or just links and somebody in the mood might just pick it up.
The basic difference to 10 years ago is the amount of people online and the splintering up of all the services. Back then you had your nickname and could see a person on different channels through the whois command. Today? Not so much.
But we have blogs, don't we? And we do comment and reach each other? Well, yes and no. Yes of course we do see what other people read - but it is to a much wider circle. The world (and those search engines) read what I may not want them to read. But I would love to bolt it out to a handful of more or less known people.
I don't know about you, but I have always been quite strict about how I handle the things I get to know. If it is on a blog, web site it is open. If it is in a channel or on a mailing list, it depends on the content. A link to a site will mostly be accredited with a "via IRC/mail". This is not to not credit the person who gave it to me, but to make sure no unintentional harm is done. Liek for example this nice "
Porn For Women Retrospective 2006" link. You would never believe where that came from - and it would take me ages to explain. Personal IM are not bloggable or even distributable unless I get permission - which I ask and will add the question for "with your name / nick or just plain this way".
And then there is the timing aspect. When I am on a channel, I can grumble about something, or just ask for what I should cook from these three ingredients and and and. I will get an immediate answer. Which I do not get on a blog.
Meet Twitter. People going in for Twitter are - at least from my point of view - of the kind to give to a limited degree information about themselves out in a blast which is a bit different in openness than it is with a blog. It is more intimate. And who want the time aspect too. In essence it is just a mobile chat client with a limited feature set and friendlist. ;)
You can see this wish for intermediate communication in Skype as well - people have misused their name field to fill in for a blast feature until they managed to implement it. Yahoo 360 has had this from the beginning and I think that is a perfect feature - except it was limited to Yahoo 360.
So all in all back to the roots - and most of the people doing these new services have roots in IRC as well. So why oh why did they not transfer the tools as well? *deepsigh*
Tag(s): twitter, irc, communication
08.01.07 - the small things - 3 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Although I am not much of an Apple Lover (they are just not compatible with me) I do acknowledge which role they have played and what has happened throughout the last years
because of this the company - and of course the Ipod.
On Google Video there is an over 40 min long
Discovery channel documentary about it and although I am only half way through you should take a look too.
[And i have said this before: Where is my "pay 20-50 cents to the make of this documentary" button on those videosites (of which the person please also gets the money?
I would pay a small amount for a good documentary, recognizing how much effort has went into that for the benefit of being able to watch it. Yes, there is a channel over here which does run Discovery channel - satellite which I will not install or buy in hardware, nor watch on a TV screen and even if , it would be a dubbed version anyhow. I do have DSL and I have a computer, that is more than is needed. ]
(via Mail.)
Technorati Tags: apple, ipod, documentary, history of ipod
05.01.07 - business blogging - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
When I first read about
Performancing metrics going to Payperpost I thought "ouch - exactly the reason why I do only trust a few tools". Because it was users and data for mining which would have been sold. And the backslash from the community was not small.
Interestingly now the Payperpost people "regretfully" decided that the deal was not right for them and the feedback from their community was not positive etc etc. Yeah right. As TC writes it in
Amateur Hour At PayPerPost:
In a post on the PayPerPost blog today, the company said "We…dug into the Metrics platform and regretfully found that it wasn’t what we were looking for right now." That came just a week after the official announcement of the acquisition.
Generally speaking, responsible companies “dig into” the acquisition target before they announce a deal.
As sorry as I feel for the Metric guys I have to ask the question if I am the only one who thinks that the reason for the buying was not the pure metric solution but the userbase who so willingly would put out their data and their metrics? That it is about data mining?
As nice as the Performancing solution ever would have been, I never would have signed up for it for a very basic reason: Giving away your own data for what terms are good running on blogs and how their click rates are. In case you do not know it: Most blogs do NOT earn money from their current readers but from their back catalogue, once the article is indexed and has come up in the search engine rankings.
It is then about the niches of the world where you can see a kind of unimportant niche with high clicks and good prices. Analyse it and you have a gold mine. This is what you basically give away every time you install something foreign on your page. And with Performancing you also did track your adsense clicks. Great.
Now Payperpost: They want to know and prove what is working. What better thing to deliver to possible customers than "look. These are the blogs and this is how they have topics and this is how good click through rates are" (a very simplistic view). But for this you would have needed one thing: blogs who provide the metrics.
And this is the part where the users said "no more". The storm which rose over the acquisition of the Metric Solution to Payperpost should have shown an impact on the userbase of people saying "I quit" - and I think this is what happened. Why else should you announce a deal and then cut it off again if the basic product itself stayed the same? Because the real part of the "acquisition" fell through.
And it is a good time to look at the parts you use and integrate into your website - what will happen if that data and you as a user is sold one day, hm?
In case you are looking for a nice integrated solution again - go Feedburner. They just added
site statistics and you should use it for your feed anyway. ;)
Technorati Tags: payperpost, performancing, feedburner, metrics
05.01.07 - business blogging - 1 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
The "5 things you might not know about me" meme has been around for some time now and this actually is the english text version - I already did a
German one as well as record this one in the latest
useful sounds podcast.
- Call me Nicole, thanks.
nisi / neezee and nixande are my most likely usernames in different services and tools. One of the reason why I prefer them over my normale name is the fact that I am not able to type my first nor my last name fast. Nicole nearly never comes out correctly, but Nciole / Nicloe and Simoen / Simone are favorites *grrrr*
You would assume that my 'natural' nick name would be Nicki / Nicky or such. Well, there was a bavarian singer of stupid songs during the time someone would pick a nickname so that was out of the question. By chance my mother needed to put my name in my clothes for some kind of summer camp and was lazy. As NS could have been mistaken for somebody else NiSi would have probably not.
By that time I found my first name to be boring and was very upset by my parents not to give me a second name like everybody else in my family has. (Although - that probably would have been Maria). So I went with Nisi and even got some teacher to call me that name.
Some time ago I adapted the spelling to Neezee because I like the writing better than Nisi and you englisch speaking people can pronounce it better. ;)
Nonetheless I really dislike being called by that nicknames (except in some specific circumstances like for clarification) and prefer being called Nicole.
- I love piano / synthi
You may have heard me calling musik "Schrammelmusik", which is a German expression I probably made up. Consider this to be everything which relies to heavy on guitars. Not my kind. It is not that I actually need to have the mellow ones, I really do enjoy some kinds. But what it boils down to is simple: I just love synthizers and piano.
My first crush in high school played piano and introduced me to Saga - but that can't be it. Another one of my favorites in this regard is FPI Project with "Rich in Paradise". Steppin up that boots baby! ;)
- nearly 20 years of being online or why Nicole 17 is a bad choice for a nickname
I will be able to celebrate 20 years of chat history by 2008. The reason I remember? When I joined btx (a German system like the french minitel), I thought of what nickname to pick. Nicole was already taken so I took Nicole17. Yes, you can probably guess why that was a baaaaaad idea. The nick is still perfect for demonstration purposes. ;)
With an interruption of some years and a short intermezzo with Compuserve I really starting using the net (and chat of course) in 1995. Btw one reason to have _nisi / _neezee as a nickname on IRC? It does not sound female ...
- No love for horses. Ever.
I am not sure if this is only a thing for German teenage girls, but they all seem to have their phase of "loving horses and going riding". Like between 10-15 or such, before they get into boys. Never ever had that, not the slightest bit of interest ever.
- I appreciate small things and gestures
I don't need nor want fancy stuff, instead I am more than happy with simple things. Looking up at the stars and enjoy them on a clear night, beautiful colors of the sky in the evening, zen like arrangements, just the simple pleasure of pure bread and some butter, and and and. Also I appreciate if someone is attentive and shows that they pay attention - which can be done by small gestures many may find to little. I appreciate them.
I am tagging
Pedro,
André,
Alex,
Rick and
Dragos, 4 out of 5 l of which I met for the first time at reboot. ;)
03.01.07 - fun - 1 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
As it has been quite some time since I did one I thought I might alert you to the fact that I have published a new podcast for the new year with the title
"Useful Sounds No. 049: Look back on 2006, an outlook on 2007 and 5 things you don't about me"
on my
Useful Sounds. ;) The "5 things you might not know about me" will be published as text also in this blog.
02.01.07 - podcasting - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
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