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Paying It Forward
When I was a graduate student, our group of experimenters and theorists had a close relationship with the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London. Among the several visitors from that department to ours was Anne Pery-Thorne; everyone called her Lady Anne. As I’ve since come to find out, she is the daughter of Edmund Pery, 5th Earl of Limerick. I didn’t know her very well and she, a distinguished physicist, undoubtedly was barely aware of the existence of this graduate student.
A few years later, near the start of my professional career, I was in London with a friend. Having made previous arrangements (probably by mail) to visit her at Imperial College, my friend and I stopped by her office in Kensington. She was most gracious and generous with her time, telling us about her current work and asking after my own. She was preparing the second edition of her book, which is still in print. I still remember this episode with fondness.
My purpose in writing this memoir is to note that acts of kindness by senior professionals are appreciated and long remembered by their juniors. Though I can’t pay back her consideration and regard for me, I can pay it forward to younger colleagues. When one of our junior engineers left for greener pastures about ten years ago, at his going-away lunch he paid us the highest possible compliment. He said, “You guys made me.” Now he’s a program manager at a much larger company, supervising about 100 engineers.
Afterword: This was written before the kerfuffle at Google over the Demara memo. Though not the point of this memoir at all, the subject happens to be a woman. Even back in the dark ages of the 20th century, long before we were instructed by Google management on the evils of sexism, our group treated this woman like anyone else of her rank as far as I observed, i.e., with great deference in light of her accomplishments. This is not to say she never experienced unfair treatment elsewhere or at other times in her career. The topic just never came up. And so it is with other female colleagues: we’ve collaborated and coauthored publications and they were always considered to be equals in my experience. It would never occur to me to care about a colleague’s sex or other irrelevant trait. We have bigger fish to fry: prying loose some of Nature’s secrets. Anyone who can help is welcome.
Published in Science & Technology
My Dad has always called this “Acting like a Christian.”
Whether one believes or not, it is the right way to act. Pity more Christians don’t. Glad you can.
As one ought to a fellow human being (remembering one’s own youth), and as one ought as a duty to the profession, which ever it may be.
Exactly.
Thanks for posting this life memoir; important character traits to remember to share and practice.
Thank you, drl. I really liked this Post. I need to remember to do more mentoring, as I get lost in the weeds a lot at work
At my company, I have changed positions a lot, and a lot of managers have come and gone. I think the current number is 16 managers. Of them all, I have had 6 female managers.
One of them is in my bottom 5, two are in my top 5, and the rest are scattered around the list of good/bad managers.
Just like the men.
I am old enough to remember when engineering was really difficult for a woman. There were professors who thought women were not going to stick with engineering and were taking up classroom seats that should go to deserving men. I witnessed a few instances of discrimination against girls in my classes. This was in the mid 1970s, and my classmates were sympathetic to the girls. I figured that the scene was changing and these girls were going to be really good engineers.
There were only three that stayed in the program and graduated. They did make great engineers. One married a buddy of mine.
I saw the landscape entirely change for women in engineering during my career. I briefly had a woman engineer manager who had come through about ten years ahead of me; Gail Scott was awesome. She had prevailed against very difficult circumstances.
I watched a good office manager try repeatedly to hire young women engineers. They kept moving away, on account of their husband decided to take a job in a different city. Or one got divorced and moved to her hometown. Or a couple decided to drop out and take the mommy track. Or one got hired away for bigger money by a competitor. After many hires of young women engineers, our office currently has none. And we were very good to our women engineers.
I taught a class at the nearby university for a few years (until they could add another full time faculty position). Freshman classes in engineering are about 60 percent female, but graduating classes are about 30 percent female, and this is despite a vigorous program to support and encourage the female students.
So there should be no surprise that Google has a problem with filling positions with female engineers.
Great points. Paying it forward indeed.
I had a female engineer here at my company for several years. She was quite skilled, but was sorely lacking in interpersonal skills. Unfortunately she used this as an excuse to wave the sexism flag at frequent opportunities, even when we were trying very hard to encourage her in her job. Eventually she had created such a toxic environment around herself that she had to leave (it was either that or we fire her). There was no sexism at play at all, but her seeing it in every shadow rather ruined her opportunity. It was a shame, really, as she was very good at her job, but the perpetual victim mentality poisoned the well.
I don’t doubt that and don’t doubt that it can be true even today, and not just in class. We all tend to judge each other based on superficial traits at first. This includes many characteristics besides all usual list of sex, ethnicity, and age. For example, studies have shown that taller or better-looking people are better paid even in jobs where such traits are irrelevant.
This pre-judging (prejudice!!!) is a part of the human condition, specifically, part of our pattern-recognition firmware that often serves us well. Kahneman and Tversky call it System 1. It’s not going away, no matter how much Google* wishes it away, just as some real differences between men and women aren’t going away. The challenge has been and still remains to see beyond these to find other merits that are more important: in other words, to treat humans as individuals. Just keep in mind that the main point of my post was that this distinguished scientist (a woman) treated me as an equal even though I was a nobody.
*I noticed that Kahneman gave a talk at Google in 2011. I don’t think they understood it.
Just as sexism is real, so is the false perception of sexism. Never having observed either at first hand, my sense is that the prevalence of both has been exaggerated. Most people are too busy trying to get along in life and to solve their own problems.
True. Some people, though, want to invent problems so they something else to blame for their own failures.
I have a dissent here that I think shouldn’t be omitted from the whole story — though a few of you have touched on it.
I have three daughters and one son and the two younger daughters have these stories:
And:
Interesting, isn’t it? I felt in both cases that they just wanted to show to themselves and others that they could do it — could succeed in a man’s job and do it well. But, they were not dedicated to the job, not really.
If it’s true that women doctors work far fewer hours than male doctors and the societal cost for their education is extremely high then I want these facts faced clearly by everyone. I want the lies to stop about lower pay and I want the facts to be faced as to what we are doing here.
Other than that I love your post, DL. It’s great.
And this:
I don’t blame men for staying away from college these days.
When I was in university and then got hired by Boeing in 1980 there were 3 women hired about the same time in a set of about 15 people. These were very smart women and they were good at their jobs.
Within 2 years they were all gone: all 3 left the engineering field. I don’t remember the details anymore but marriage, job choice (MBA, I think) and something else were the reasons I can remember.
They wanted to show that they could do the job. I wanted to show that I loved the job and would stay in the field come hell or high water. I want to work for the next few years in the field as long as there is interesting work — I’m lucky to be in a field that is fun. I doubt I will retire before age 70.
By the way, I doubt if women have it as easy as men do in a lot of these fields. So, DL, your story is very inspiring.
This has to be said in order to provide a balanced view.
The workplace is not principally a vehicle for self-actualization; it’s about getting something useful done. If self-actualization happens along the way, great. If you have fun at work, also great. I’m glad your daughters succeeded but sorry to hear that they weren’t really into it. As you noted, each may have displaced someone who was and that’s a shame.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath on that ’cause you’ll just turn blue. What happened to the Google guy is even worse.
Yeah, me too. I don’t need the dough but I need the work, if you know what I mean.
Please keep in mind that my post was never meant to be about sexism, women in science, or Google. Current events put a twist on my story but nothing essential would have changed if it had been one of the guys from Blackett Lab instead of a woman.
I’ve been in academic physics for just under a decade now. I have, of course, known and collaborated with many fine female physicists and mathematicians, and have only once heard of a clear cut instance of inappropriate behavior. Rather, I actually witnessed it. During a marquee lecture series, the speaker (a faculty member at my undergraduate university) said something to the effect of “Women make excellent experimentalists. Taking good data from [I’ve forgotten the specific instrument] requires one to sit for long periods of time at attention, and since women have bigger rear ends they are better equipped for this activity.” Probably in bad taste, but the speaker has tenure, so nothing much came of it…
I know that in the before time sexism was rampant, however, I have seen precious little evidence of systemic sexism today (vs. the episodic sexism related above). On the contrary, I’ve seen funding allocated for groups like the “Society for Women in Physical Sciences” and eight of the ten NSF-GRFP recipients I’ve known have been women. In my weaker moments, it’s galling to see the disparity in concrete support available exclusively for men vs. women. I wish very much that education and associated programs were gender agnostic, but voicing that opinion on my current campus would see me strung up in a heartbeat. I’ve always felt that what mattered was between your ears, rather than between your legs, but that’s a controversial notion these days.
Edit: I feel obligated to respond to the main point in the OP—it’s fantastic when superiors show that sort of kindness and basic humanity towards those lower in the hierarchy. It’s far too common for the cut throat nature of the academic rat race to take over. I’ve tried my best as a graduate student to do the same for those few lower than me, the undergrads. There’s nothing more rewarding than watching a freshman I taught get involved in research and write a senior thesis!
Sad that, isn’t it? Yet another reason to be glad I fled the academy after finishing my degree.
Meanwhile, during my first year here a graduate student from the previous year’s cohort did a interview with KALX (university run public radio) in which she stated (direct quote) “the problem with physics is that there are so many white males… that’s dangerous.” She went on to lead a group of graduate students in an effort to get rid of preliminary exams and qualifying exams, which are apparently racist and sexist. We already do not require a final defense, so if they had been successful you could earn a PhD here without being accountable in any way except to your advisor and committee members (if they bother to fully read your dissertation).
Edit: you might be able to see why I gave up on that series of posts about academia after the second installment, I feel like this place is turning me into a misanthrope.
Woman engineer here. I graduated with a BS EE in 1991 and immediately got a job with a government contractor. When I think how pathetic I was, I feel guilty about my employment. I had no real world experience (in engineering) and no intention of making it a lifelong career. I mean, I contributed while I was there (with interruptions), but I was not a good investment for the company.
A cousin who was many years ahead of me in breaking into the field experienced sexism (she was asked to fetch the coffee at the meetings), but I experienced the reverse. The company I worked for showed favoritism to women, if anything. In my five years on the job, I had one male manager (whose upper management was female) and one male lead. All the rest were women, even the ones working “part time” (even though they still put in 40 hours) because they had young kids.
I left for the mommy track as any sane woman would. Managing a household is a full time job, no matter what anyone says. I work longer hours than I ever did as an engineer and some of the same midnight shifts. I have no desire to go back.
As to the OP (about mentoring young engineers), Mr. C has been worried about the lack of young people to mentor for many years now. He’s in a very specialized niche (nuclear effects testing) and hardly any young engineers are interested in applying. He works with a bunch of gray beards nearing retirement.
Although, if the NorKs keep it up, Mr. C could become very busy and very popular…
What a great thread! This is a great example of why Ricochet is so valuable. Opinions and observations by learned folks with insightful experiences. So unlike Twitter or “comments” at all other websites.