Sexual Equality in the Workplace? What Sexual Equality in the Workplace?

I was asked to write a piece on sexism in the workplace. I think it was assumed I'd go in a different direction.

---

There was a time when sexism in the workplace, especially in Virginia, was predictable. It was a "good ol' boy" network where men just felt that woman had different strengths than men, and business was not one of them. The good ol' boy network is still alive and well, but at least in IT shops, there's a new breed of sexism. And it has claws.

It's women running an all-girl club, and burying anyone who doesn't fit into one of two roles: male follower or women.

I know, someone somewhere (probably a woman) is saying I'm just pissing sour grapes. That it can't be as bad as male sexism. Possibly. But the old adage still applies, two wrongs don't make a right.

People's Exhibit A:
In 1998 I helped start a company called [redacted], going under the name of [redacted], . We managed the [redacted] , and assisted in making Virginia internet-wonderful. I started as a webmaster and managed to work my way up to something akin to middle management. I was one of five people who paved the way for all the honeysuckles who came later to have jobs and loaf about drinking boxed wine and playing harps.

One day we hired a young girl to do some customer service stuff. A temp to handle calls, file papers, etc. All the ladies loved her, I liked her, but she knew next to nothing about the internet. After she introduced herself to me and my cubemate, he turned to me and said, "In a year we'll be working for her."

He was wrong. In a year she was a project manager in the shop. In two she had passed us entirely, left the state, and become the General Manager of her own network (the name for the individual business entities under the corporate umbrella). She still knew next to nothing about the internet, marketing, business, or management. Didn't matter. Corporate wanted women to run things, so she shot passed those of us who actually knew the landscape.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she did well. She's a great person. But she didn't get her chance in the sun because of her training, her skills, or her experience. She got it because she was a woman.

People's Exhibit B:
Same company, same story, different woman. Came in after us as a project manager without project management training, within three years she was running her own network for the company. In comparison, I was allowed to have a small fishtank in my cube. I won several Best of the Web awards, First in the Nation awards, and E-Gov pioneer awards. I was published in Government Technology and Style Weekly.

I wasn't going anywhere.

People's Exhibit C:
Same company. Four of the five men who had started the company were still in the positions, more or less, that they had in the beginning. Slightly different titles, but the same gig overall. The fifth man? He was forced to resign when they took his position away and wanted to send him to a state several thousand miles away from his family.

A programmer with average Perl skills and no experience in marketing, project management, or business goes to a developer conference in New Orleans and hangs out with the COO. She comes back a Project Manager. Within a year she's the Director of Marketing. Not only did she pass over three men with more experience, she hopped departments to do it. What she did have going for her was that she became quick friends with the current Director of Marketing, who then went on to be the General Manager. Niether of them had training in marketing, business, or management. But they were both women.

I disagreed with the skipping over of the three men.

I was asked to leave the company. Then blackballed from working in IT for a year.

People's Exhibit D:
I was hired as a Web Manager at the [redacted]. It was a lengthy process consisting of several screenings, committee interviews, and skills tests. They were desperate to get someone onboard who knew something about web portals, and I had been designing and implementing them for ten years. The IT Department was 62 people strong and they had been trying to redesign their web site for the last seven years (yeah, I know. That should have tipped me off. I thought it was hyperbole).

I didn't know it at the time, but they had a great way of getting rid of employees upper management didn't like. They would rescope the position to something the person in question couldn't do, then give them the opportunity to resign. And by "they" I'm referring what came to be known as "The Estrogen Club."

The Director of the IT Department was a woman who really only trusted other women. Don't know why, but that was the long and short of it. She ran the Department like the Bataan Death March run by cheerleaders. She was out during my hiring, it seems, which is how a testosterone container like myself made it in.

From my hire to this blog entry, the following had occured:

Number of Men Fired, Laid Off, or Forced to Resign: 9 plus 1 that was able to switch departments
Number of Men promoted to management positions: 0
Number of Women Fired, Laid Off, or Forced to Resign: 0
Number of Women promoted to management positions: 3

Statistically unlikely, don't you think?

I was replaced after a year and a half by a woman with none of my skills, and none of the skills originally required for the position.

Now, I'm not saying that the same sort of thing doesn't go in in other companies with a male bias. I'm sure it does. I've never seen it in any of the IT shops I've worked at, but I know it's probably there. But you never hear about reverse discrimination; reverse sexism. People act as if such an animal could never exist. And if it does, it's just equality of the sexes, not any sort of discrimination. Or, at the extreme, something that's okay because it was done for so long in the other end of the spectrum.

But something wrong is wrong no matter how you spin it. Treating someone unfairly is bad not because YOU get treated unfairly, but because a PERSON is treated unfairly. No matter the color, religion, or gender. Whether you agree with their politics or share their brand of genitalia.

It's just wrong.

NIC Press Release

I just ran across this and thought it was interesting the way NIC (the parent company of Virginia Interactive, the guys who manage Virginia.gov) buried the most interesting part in the middle of an unrelated press release.

--


NIC Announces Retirement of Chief Executive Officer Jeff Fraser

Harry Herington appointed Chief Executive Officer

OLATHE, Kan. – February 6, 2008 – eGovernment provider NIC Inc. (NASDAQ: EGOV) today announced the retirement of Jeff Fraser as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. He will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.

The Board has named Harry Herington as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. Mr. Herington has served as President since 2006 and has held several leadership positions at NIC since joining the Company in 1995, including Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Portal Operations.

“Harry Herington has an outstanding track record of delivering results at NIC,” said Jeff Fraser. “I am confident that NIC will continue to grow under Harry’s highly capable and energetic leadership.”

These actions follow the conclusion of a review undertaken by the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors, with the assistance of outside, independent counsel, which focused on the reimbursement of expenses by certain executive officers, including Mr. Fraser. The review covered the period from January 1, 2004, through June 30, 2007, and was conducted with full cooperation by the Company and Mr. Fraser in conjunction with an informal inquiry of expense reporting by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Fraser has reimbursed the Company approximately $97,000 in expenses as a result of the review, which followed reimbursement by him of approximately $186,000 in expenses made prior to the review. The reimbursement was made to correct expense reporting during the period from January 2004 through October 2006 that was inconsistent with the Company’s expense reimbursement policies.

The internal review also revealed that these expense reimbursement deficiencies were isolated to Mr. Fraser. NIC does not believe the amounts involved are material to its financial condition or results of operations.

Mr. Fraser co-founded the Company that would become NIC in 1992 and served as Chief Executive Officer until the end of 1999. He retired to become non-executive Chairman and relinquished day-to-day management to a new leadership team. Following an acquisition-based expansion strategy that placed NIC’s future growth at risk, the Board of Directors asked Fraser to return as Chief Executive Officer in May 2002. At his request, Fraser received a salary of $1.00 per year in 2002 and 2003 and $5,500 per year to cover medical benefits in 2004 and 2005. The Board approved a salary of $325,000 in 2006 in recognition of Fraser’s turnaround plan that refocused on the core portal business and returned NIC to profitability as a highly successful leader in the eGovernment space.

“We thank Jeff for his vision and commitment to building the industry-leading eGovernment provider from the ground up,” said Art Burtscher, Chairman of the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors. “The Board of Directors is confident the current management team is capable of continuing NIC’s current track record of growth and we look forward to further success under Harry Herington’s leadership.”

Saving Money? Or VITA-fying it?

As I was pouring over various Web pages and documents, looking for something to rail against, I ran across a subpage of the Virginia.gov site. The Virginia portal (that's a website that goes to other websites, or one of those things on Star Trek that takes you to the Gamma Quadrant), long one of my favorite government sites, is part of what appears to be the ever-cloudy legacy of IT gone sour in Virginia. The portal is claimed as one of the few VITA success, using the model of the public-private partnership to bring government to citizens.

Only, after a bit of digging and some calling around, the numbers don't add up.

A private vendor is responsible for maintaining the Virginia.gov portal. That company is Virginia Interactive, which is part of a larger Corporate Entity called NIC Inc. Virginia Interactive gets paid something in the neighborhood (and a nice neighborhood it is) of $4 million a year to keep the portal lights on. VITA holds the contract and seems to think they're getting their money's worth. Well, let's do the numbers, shall we?

Judging from what many states pay, and taking into account the Virginia site is mostly static HTML, you can keep the site going and fairly fresh with one FTE (Full Time Employee), one server, and one T1 connection. Pay the FTE about $45k a year (it's just HTML and pictures), buy the server at a reasonable $3,000, and pay for the T1 at a slightly painful $6,000 a year, and you get a total of: $54,000 a year (I know, the server doesn't burn out every year, but the math is easier). For a grand total profit of $3,946,000 a YEAR.

That's a lot of scratch, me buckos.

One insider pointed out that for that $3.9 million, the vendor does a lot of free work. Like what? Hard to say. The State Payment Portal? There's an extra fee attached. Hunting and Fishing licenses online? Fee. Health Professions information? Fee. Lobbyist in a box? Service of Process? PEO Services? Web design? Fee, fee, fee, fee.

DMV records? Well, that's got some wiggle room. Assuming for the moment that DMV can't figure out how to get THEIR DATA online in an "enhanced" manner, the technology being used is fairly old and standardized. Is it worth $3.9 million a year? Many say, "Hell no." A million, maybe. If you aren't charging for all that other stuff, too.

So, only $2.9 million a year in profit? Hardly sounds like VITA is saving the state any money, does it? I'll do it for $1 million a year, and save the state almost $2 million a year. How's THAT for cost-savings...

Makes me wonder what we're in store with the RFPs being reviewed from IBM and Northrop. A billion a year to cut grass?