Recently I was asked by my wife, is something she could learn/do to help me in my IT job. What options do you see?
Say: You want to work 4 days and your girl 1 day. And you want to co-operate.
What IT stuff can she do? What should I teach her?
I am cloud/python/java/devops person.
Give her an overview of what's out there in super general terms so she can figure out what she's interested in and go from there?
Great! What basic topics you think I should present and give her choice?
What do you know about? She's asking you! :)
I think a lot of the discussion in this thread is useful, but let's please not make broad generalizations around gender in technology, and gender behavior in general.
For this thread and in general, being open-minded and listening well is key.
My sister, and few female friends/other sisters, they all started with drawing, illustration, vector, and such. Some of them started with Frontend.
They were always trying something new, specially tools like inkscape/illustrator was there for when they needed it. Feels fun watching them trying to do various creative stuff.
Few also tried backend, networking and QA, but, honestly I did not feel any of them as energized as the others mentioned above.
I missed one thing, illustration/vector etc stuff, can help you in lots of ways. Look at the badges of this site, doesn't it look cute? Do you think someone stupid like me can design such creative stuff? Also, you can keep thinking about something creative and spend time on it at a later time.
Illustration for the win!
PS: Ask her if she likes to draw or likes cute stuff like this. And she can actually help you in many ways that you cannot even think.
Drawing is nice. Visual stories about data are very important I believe. But Don't you think everything in resources of GIFs and small images has been already invented?
I wanted to write a post few weeks ago. It was after I talked with 3 friends, who showed me how things were different from them. All of them had one specific line even though they did not know each other personally.
Obviously that's true. I had a deep thought about it and still could not go anywhere. But then I suggested them this,
Now, they barely know wordpress, or maybe knows but never used intensively. But all of them said they would love to try this no matter what.
They have their own way to keep up with struggle.
Drawing is not the important feature here, neither is frontend, or backend. The important point is to present her few possible choices and utilize that moment so she can achieve her goal.
There are hundreds of things she can help you with. I can provide some examples, but each of this will greatly vary on how you interpret it. She still doesn't know how to do this, so it will take a bit time, Anything a VA can,
It might feel not important, but if you think a bit, she can actually help you in ways that you never imagined.
Another great example is, she can make sure you follow a proper timetable and ensure your health doesn't fall apart. She can guide you by the guideline you set yourself. She an read blogs, learn from it and apply it to manage things for you. I can go on and write a book about these things that can make your life easier no matter how you see it.
There are many ways she can help, and all you will need to ask her,
And if she cannot, then tell,
Or something like that. You can change the words as you like.
Peace!
I do not think I am setting any limits on her. There are lots of things she does much better than me. But the question was as simple as that what are things that usually work the best when there are 2 people cooperating in: one with some knowledge, the second that just started learning.
Wait wait wait...the reason I said to ask to draw is not because I didn't think she cannot do it, but more like I saw girls I knew were more interested in it and she might also be interested it.
I also know girls who knows backend development, but trying to force her to something also seems not good.
"is something she could learn/do to help me in my IT job.", doesn't feel like something that needs to be backend job. It is still in discussion so we might find something that will help the in question.
PS: My question is more like an answer to know more of this, Teach her anything she wants to learn. Seems you have same intention except you don't appreciate the creative and lovely challenges that others are proposing.
@alex The the power of silence is valuable when choosing not to address the intent of the person asking the question positively, but actually turning the whole discussion into something else, which is objectively a rude thing to do.
Additionally not every culture sees the same words the same way as you do, so you are meeting his question with intolerance. Why because words, emphasis, culture, etc are not viewed the same way by everyone. He may not even have the same linguistic background to you, you choose to preach over address his intent.
Tolerance is a two way street and getting on a soapbox because the guy didn't spend 10min to write 3 lines in an off the cuff question shouldn't detract from his intent which is clearly meant to be 'he wants to include his wife. He's listening to her and wants her to feel included. He loves her so much that he's asking his peers for help so he can do right by her'.
Sounds like you are the guy who needs a lesson on how 'words' can affect others. You need to look at yourself and ask will others now feel 'unsafe' to ask questions for fear their language skills aren't good enough. Is that the world you want?
This post is 'wife' supported. ;)
If you are from those that think there are no differences between the genres... then the answer is "Anything".
If you are of those who believe there are differences of aptitude caused by labor specialization during social evolution... then you might let her make all the Office / IT work and make the hard physical work of production. They were supposed to do more intellectual work in the cave (rationalize the food, educate the children, select the plants for curing us, etc..) while we were hunting.
I believe there are differences so I would like to utilize them. It makes the team complete. Thanks! Do you have experience of watching 1 on 1 male-female teams in IT related area?
Yes. Most of the times what happen is that the selection by HR is biased. They select the smarter from the males and the more beautiful of the females.
I was a college professor for 8 years, with hundreds of students... and I can assert that there was no difference in genre performance for those who have interest.
My girlfriend is creative (god his bullet journal is beautiful) and I'm really bad at front. So I would say front :)
Also she could keep eyes on new technology and news about things you like and report you.
I think the news reporting really isn't viable, as you would need to know a great deal to know what is important and what is not.
A new point of view is important, sometimes something you think is not important is.
Ehehehe, well, the title itself says "My girl", so maybe we subconsciously used that term. The debate shouldn't be about the terms. It should be about ideas that can help them.
So, final word is, let's wait for her response and continue further on.
Get something like Raspberry PI and build informational display related to just two of you.
Like for example you could take it bit deeper into like smart mirrors but, for now you could work on just setting up Raspberry PI for to display your common calendar, weather or some other type of alerts. Slap it on your monitor or TV. Then move that onto smart mirror .. something like this: cyber-omelette.com/2016/12/smart-m...
Thank you for your idea. I think it is important to teach someone something that he will be able to utilize and will perform some practical duty for the maker. If you or anyone else have other ideas do not hesitate to share
Now that's the best answer ever! Never gotten that one yet. I respect you man. I may not always agree with you, but i respect you. Have a great weekend.
My girlfriend asked me a similar question last week. She is very creative, so i advised here to take a look in front-end development. I'm a back-end developer, so that could be a nice addition.
This is the classic example I was thinking about. But don't you think we already have such a variety of ready to use solutions so learning frontend will soon become less useful?