Was the expensive, useless system safety tested? It may be safe in the sense that it won’t self-detonate, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll do a damn thing for public safety.

You really don’t escape it though. I was the only female in a class of 40 at OSU for a summer class on Engineering. Besides the poking fun, you also get “OOOOH, the only giiiiirl” and then everyone hits on you too. I work in banking now but when I go to the computer store to upgrade something on my personal computer, I still get the “Let’s take advantage of the dumb lady in the computer components department.” Followed quickly by “Oh crap she actually knows what she’s doing… runaway!”

Hell I remember being in an introductory engineering class in 98 and the professor asked us, “Who is in this field for the money or because they like it.” I was in the 10% that “like it.” Everyone else I guess was in for a shock when they got out in 01/02 and there were very few jobs compared to that internet boom period before 2000…

I also remember being floored that in my circuits 3 class no one knew that an NP junction forms a capacitor and its impact on a transistor. Even the professor looked stunned that I cracked an eye open and answered his question.

I would say though, that the city is going to spend a decent amount on putting these devices in. It’s more of a CYA thing than an actual solution to the problem thing. ie. IF something happens to someone involving a bus that is out fitted the city doesn’t want this coming back to their incompetence (or not following proper procedure ect..)

A lot of times the solution isn’t the expensive part of the equation.

I’m gonna guess that he’ll come up with a different, yet equally lame, response.

That said, neither $5000 or $10 is reasonable for such a device. Elecronic gizmos to be installed on public buses ought to cost a few hundred $$$. I know, because I’m a male engineer who isn’t a douchebag (mostly).

[...] the last thing I want to hear from any customer service person is “I am my supervisor.”

Then today, friend, is your lucky day, because that’s not what g0d5m15t4k3 wrote, but rather:

Then I would calmly tell them I am a supervisor and any issues they have with me they can take up with me.

Emphasis mine.

Peter Bartek is a troll. Trolls make sexist comments. Trolls are much like bullies in that they will look for some physical trait or perceived weakness or easy stereotype to attack their victim with. Women and female engineers are no less immune than anyone else. I don’t know what to say other than to offer my support as a red-headed male engineer who was bullied.

There is a lot of ugliness on the Internet. There is a higher than average amount in YouTube comments. Normally, such comments would have been dismissed as juvenile sexist spewing. The reason, that this one of the vast number of awful things that have been said on YouTube has risen above the fray is simply because the commenter’s anonymity has been unmasked and he happened to not just anyone. Sure it’s bad that he’s the head of company she’s criticizing, but does that really matter? There seems to be a passive acceptance, or at least far more complacency, for this sort of thing when the actors are anonymous. All such unproductive, uncivil and trolling comments should be roundly criticized, moderated, etc.

Cheers to Jeri, great engineering and design, and civil discourse.

That said, the work is interesting and the pay is still good, so for my grade level I do OK. I suppose I should be satisfied with what I have, but when I see crap like this my head bumps into our glass ceiling, and it stings a bit.

By the comments above, Jeri is more than talented enough to hold her own in an engineering pissing match. These pissing matches are genuine manifestation of a battle of ideas. Not pretty, but oddly productive. Engineers make decisions that could kill someone, but are constrained by time and cost. And the solution is rarely obvious. So you get a weird mix of conservatism and bravado.

Under normal circumstances, we’re like boxers. We beat the crap out of each other over an idea, go to our corner to regroup, then go at it again. In the end, we decide a winner, shake hands, and get ready for the next match.

It can be done with a few words, the politest of conversations, or a real screaming match. Good engineers, men and women, stand up for their ideas. Great engineers grab onto the ideas of good engineers.

Mr. Douche is neither good nor great and effectively conceded defeat when he attacked her personally.

*even it “works” on clout and cronyism.

Elecronic gizmos to be installed on public buses ought to cost a few hundred $$$

Turn signal relay? That’ll be a few hundred $$$
Electronic transmogrifier? That’ll be a few hundred $$$

just read the article again, and didn’t see where BB is ” counterstereotyping the entire engineering field”

BB refers to one specific incidence of misogyny arising from a “long engineering tradition of crapping on women for being women”, but they’re not saying every male engineer is a sexist. they’re merely stating the fact that misogyny has existed in the past and still exists, in isolated incidents, today.

further reading on the Make blog reveals that the engineer in question feels “this type of (sexist) behavior has occurred much less in the engineering field, but it still happens.”

this story isn’t about all engineers everywhere. it isn’t about you. it’s about two individuals.

@satn: not all engineers are misogynistic. BB’s just calling out one who is. one is all it takes for this story to “work”.

1. You can bring this up to discount stereotypes about women, or
2. You can use this as a basis to try and understand how the much more pervasive stereotypes might affect them. Wouldn’t it be bad to have your gender treated the way it is on sitcoms, only all the time, in real life?

When I was an undergrad, I was part of the honors college for women in science/tech majors. As my boyfriend was a computer science student, I was asked by a professor once to attend a logic class so they could prove that women might actually be interested in the class. Really. The guys in the class looked at me like I was insane. (I ended up offending all of them when I learned the hard way that none of them knew calculus yet, and I had recently finished Calc II.)

There’s a theory in risk communication called Social Judgment Theory. You have your main opinion/belief, called an anchor, and an amount of wiggle room, or the latitude of acceptance, as to how far you’ll go from this main belief. If something is presented that fits within that latitude, you’ll be more likely to accept it. On top of that, if a concept is presented to you that doesn’t fit your worldview or within your latitude, instead of adding it to your ideas for scrutiny, you’re more likely to reject it outright.

This matters because:
1. Our society, media, and just about everything train kids from the get go that women, and aspects of being feminine, are awful.
2. Women are pushed out of tech fields once they aren’t ‘needed’ (e.g., women computers of WWII).
3. Men don’t see women in their field, so that combined with male-bonding through misogyny means that they decide women must not be technologically gifted.

Once it’s in place as a social concept that ‘X is bad at Y,’ it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where girls will suddenly drop in math scores (there are tons of studies on this). Then guys view it as their ideas being supported, not that these girls themselves need support to stay in math. And the pattern continues.

Personally, I think we need more people like Vi and George Hart, supporting that math is fun (I had the luck of attending George’s juggling lessons, even though I was atrocious).

The number of female graduate students is no indicator of acceptance into the field after graduation. Take the MFA in fine arts: the top MFA programs in the nation are comprised of at least 50% women (some up to 60%), yet the number of women represented by galleries in Chelsea is roughly 10%. Brainstormers has more info here: http://www.brainstormersreport.net/Reseach.html

And as for the sciences, everyone interested in gender stereotypes and their effects should read this: http://www.slate.com/id/2276066/

best warning ever?

An opening came up and, rather than hire anyone, I promoted one of the inspectors who had an engineering degree herself and was very smart.

It did not go smoothly. The Hispanics were not cool with taking orders from a woman (hispanic herself). The French like to debate technical/business matters by seeing who can talk loudest. She had trouble with that.

Eventually she learned to handle it, but more than once she came into my office, closed the door, and cried for a while. Being a woman in a technical field is no picnic.

There are probably a few levels of bureaucracy and cronyism to traverse. Non-experts requesting changes to your product, etc. But whatever the system is like, it clearly rewards douchebags like the CEO in the article.

Regardless, I lol’ed at her awesome video. “YOU ARE BEING RUN OVER BY THE BUS!” Genius.

2)Correct! But a few bad apples spoil the barrel and it really doesn’t take much to be very discouraging, which brings me to

3)Bullshit. I have a friend who works as a design engineer. She is one of the best engineers I know. She regularly (as in she tells me about at least one every six months) has clients that won’t talk to her despite her being the senior engineer on the project. She has coworkers who tell her they won’t ride with her alone because it’s not proper for a single man and a married woman to be alone in a car together. She gets to listen to her coworkers talk about their wives as objects, trophies or ball-and-chains every day. I personally get the same ball-and-chain schpeil. I personally get dismissed by field personnel in favor of my male coworker despite it being my area of expertice.

Every single female engineer I know gets this sort of treatment regardless of where she works. Most of us are good at letting it roll off but that doesn’t mean we like it or deserve it and it DOES mean that there were likely a lot of other women who couldn’t let it roll off. So yeah, your third point is bogus, sorry to tell you.

You don’t have to conciously be a mysoginist to make a disparaging comment about someone’s gender. It’s normal in our society to do so, in fact. That still doesn’t make it right.