{"id":865,"date":"2013-08-29T09:12:40","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T15:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/?p=865"},"modified":"2013-08-29T09:45:27","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T15:45:27","slug":"im-just-a-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/im-just-a-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"I’M JUST A GIRL"},"content":{"rendered":"

…..so don\u2019t let me have any rights!<\/a><\/h3>\n

So I went to the office on Tuesday as I normally do. This time I actually had my one-on-one with my boss. We have a leave each other alone sort of relationship, I try really hard not to bother him with petty things and copy him on anything that might blow up. But today we are doing our new mid-year review which is a short conversation. I am told I am a high meets and that the new management criteria for doing exceeds is that you have to go out of your way to do other things not assigned to you without being asked. Whoa that sounds like a can of worms. Great, I guess I don\u2019t care reviews generally turn out to be a bogus crap pile anyway. But here is where things go south he tells me I can\u2019t get my promotion to Senior Database Engineer because there is a perception that I am resistant to do work and that I am defensive. Hmmm. There are no examples of this issue presented to me, no mention of how to actually change this. The information given was \u201cwell on that project ABC, they are just nuts and it\u2019s okay. We don\u2019t need to worry about them\u201d. If we don\u2019t push back on them they\u2019d make a big mess. We discuss how the architect would tell me “NO WE ARE NOT DOING THAT” and then be gone 2 days. I would spend those 2 days saying “No, I am sorry we can\u2019t”. Then she\u2019d return to change her mind making me look like an ass. Oh the boss LOLd and said that has happened to him. Great! He mentions that even someone on my team thought that I was reluctant.\u00a0 Ah\u2026. the bells went off in my head. I asked what has gone wrong with written communications, I mean we used to write letters and memos on paper and no one got so upset or read so much into it but email is a different story. Everyone reads their own emotions into the text regardless of how it is presented. But best of all he doesn\u2019t see this \u201cissue\u201d. I told him that I just don\u2019t understand how I could come across like that because I am not angry and I don\u2019t have any animosity about anything going on. He just shrugs his shoulder and says \u201che doesn\u2019t get it either\u201d.<\/p>\n

I have only worked on 1 thing with someone on my team. They are a \u201cDBA\u201d. This person suggested that there are too many joins in my SP (highly normalized database) and that I should use user defined functions instead. This person changed 1 #temptable in an SP to a table variable and acted like it would change the world. The problem here is that the server where all this sits has issues. There are tons of things going on and our production team has been monitoring and working on solutions for a couple months now. So YES I do have an issue, I don\u2019t like someone telling the customer that this temp table change and index rebuild is going to fix their time outs. I don\u2019t feel that this is a long term solution. I also know looking at these large tables that don\u2019t have maintenance plans and are sitting with stats out of date and fragmentation in the 80% range isn\u2019t helping anything at all. I have real concerns being the responsible party pushing that rebuild into prod without knowing how long it will take and its impact on that, let\u2019s call it sick machine. I worked with the PROD team to run a test on a reporting server that has transactional replication. This would let me know how long to expect this to run and when to set the window to avoid any issues. Once my team member found out about this he went over my head and the PROD DBA\u2019s head to the bosses and got this test cancelled and had the item shoved into production. I decided that I just couldn\u2019t spend the time or clock cycles to care about this, the good news was I wasn\u2019t responsible for the deployment and if the rebuild took too long and they killed it I wouldn\u2019t be charged with the failure and rollback. *As a side note that doesn\u2019t pertain to this story they didn\u2019t run this during the suggested window and it took over 6 hours. We are also still seeing occasional issues with the SP being slow. It appears to grab a bad plan handle or no plan handle \u2013 once recompiled it goes back to normal. Yes my \u201cDBA\u201d has suggested we recompile every time it runs, all 6k a day.<\/p>\n

So yesterday was Wednesday and I was feeling sad. Sad that I am a girl. Sad that none of this was my code that was being defended. Sad that I at the end of the day don\u2019t give a shit about anything but data integrity and the health of my systems. And sad that because of that I am being seen as \u201creluctant\u201d and \u201cdefensive\u201d. But then the sadness gets worse because I realize that 2 of the guys on my team are the same way one of them more vocal and they don\u2019t have this issue. HELL they coach me and help me when I ask about stupid things going on, they tell me to say NO. I am sad because being a girl means I don\u2019t have the same rights as the guys. I have never gotten mad, raised my voice, thrown a fit, I don\u2019t go running to tell someone every time my feelings are hurt or every time someone disrespects me, I don\u2019t run to HR when the room full of LMM are rude and dismiss me because I am a woman but because I use caution and common sense I am being made out to be a bad guy.<\/p>\n

My Wednesday goes on to include a WIT meeting where a discussion about a current blog post makes me feel \u2026.what\u2019s the word I am looking for\u2026. WOUND UP! Maybe I am being over sensitive because I feel like I have been put in the \u201cyou\u2019re a girl STFU\u201d box. So I will say that the cave man in this story has stated that they don\u2019t want women speakers at their user group because they want technical content. Now if you know me my personal spoken reaction would come out not fit for an R Rating. But inside I am hurt, I know that someone said this to a friend of mine and I am sad that this type of behavior still goes on today. Maybe it is okay in a culture, time and place that I don\u2019t understand but it isn\u2019t okay here. The silver lining is that a few outspoken men have written about it and how appalled they are by this behavior. I am guessing that more men speaking out on the subject will make it more unacceptable to behave in this manner. But in the end my feelings nose dive because someone suggest that SWAG be purchased in PINK.\u00a0 Where I respond with really? I mean that clashes with everything I own.<\/p>\n

PINK, so funny that earlier in the day I read an old article about how to keep a man, mind you we are talking in the 50\u2019s. One item is to own pink panties. My online response was I DON\u2019T WANT ANYTHING PINK EVAR! Why do women fight for rights and demand to be treated like equals and then turn around and grab the typical stereotype that we are trying to crush? WHY? Why is it that someone would suggest that WIT swag should be pink? Why am I so irritated by all this?<\/p>\n

Now that it is Thursday my last working day of this week I sit here and reflect and figure out what all this means. Well the last NomCom interview of the BoD applicants was last night so that is a relief. I have most things ready for our company coming this weekend. I am really still sad that I don\u2019t know how to fix this perception at work and I don\u2019t really know if I care. Maybe it\u2019s time to find a new work environment where my gender isn\u2019t an issue. There really are no women in higher positions at my company and there really aren\u2019t any IT leaders that are women. IMO that says a lot. Maybe it\u2019s time to get more involved in community items that actively promote WIT. Maybe I just need to take a nap and pretend the middle of this week didn\u2019t happen, you know what the internet says? Pictures or it didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…..so don\u2019t let me have any rights! <\/p>\n

So I went to the office on Tuesday as I normally do. This time I actually had my one-on-one with my boss. We have a leave each other alone sort of relationship, I try really hard not to bother him with petty things and copy him on anything that might blow up. But today we are doing our new mid-year review which is a short conversation. I am told I am a high meets and that the new management criteria for doing exceeds is that you have to go out of your way to do other things not assigned to you without being . . . → Read More: I’M JUST A GIRL<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,5,4],"tags":[254,231,218,255,257,256,296],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sqlfamily-technology","category-everyday-life","category-rant","tag-justagirl","tag-sqlcommunity","tag-sqlfamily","tag-wit","tag-dayinthelife","tag-ramblings","tag-rant","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clarkcreations.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}