WiAC Interview: Deborah Wazir, UNIX/Linux SysAdmin at General Motors IT

Submitted by rikki on March 4, 2013 - 3:09 pm

In a new Women in Advanced Computing (WiAC) interview series, we focus on sysadmins. This week we hear from Deborah Wazir, a sysadmin since 1988.

RE: Please tell us a little about yourself and what you do.

DW: I’m currently working as a UNIX/Linux sysadmin for General Motors IT. My team’s focus is setting up the infrastructure and compute platforms to bring the majority of the IT function back in-house. My current workgroup is the most gender-balanced I’ve ever worked with—we are still growing but so far, out of around 14 sysadmins, we have 6 women.

I was a very girly girl growing up, and most people were surprised when I pursued an electrical engineering degree in college. My interests had been literature, crafts, and competitive dance, and I hated math. I had not intended to take more than the minimum math classes to graduate high school, but my Geometry teacher was so fun I wanted to take another class from him. The only other class he taught was Physics, so that meant I had to take Advanced Algebra, Trigonometry, and Calculus simultaneously. Then when it came time to choose college majors, my high school boyfriend was going to study computer science, so I decided I would learn to design computers.

I started working as an engineering co-op student at General Motors the day after high school graduation. The other engineers would say, “EE major? You must really like math!” and I would say no, I really hated it, and they would get this puzzled look on their faces. I thought, “How much math could there be?” Imagine my surprise when I started classes. I loved programming, building circuits, and all my labs; my humanities electives were a breeze and kept me sane—but good lord the calculus was a killer. And I hardly would ask for help because I thought if I couldn’t figure it out myself, it meant I was too stupid to be there; however, I did really well at work and I got so much good feedback and encouragement from all my supervisors.

I worked in 14 different departments during the 5 years I was a co-op with GM, and that experience helped me hang on, keep trying, and graduate. I have been married to my best friend for 29 years; we were both EE majors and got married before graduation. I have two wonderful sons who are both in college now.

RE: How did you get started as a sys admin?

DW: I was working as a GM manufacturing engineer, when EDS published a job posting looking for folks with manufacturing experience & an engineering degree, who could program in C. So I applied and was hired for a team supporting GM CAD/CAM engineers, migrating mainframe CAD seats to Apollo engineering workstations, using a Sun file/print server. I got to become our Sun expert because I came in over the weekend and worked my way through the two 2-inch binders containing the complete Sun System Administration manual and Network Administration manual. Other than that, we learned everything on the job. That was in 1988.

RE: Do you think you've hit barriers working in IT that your male counterparts haven't had to deal with?

DW: I found it very challenging to keep growing professionally, while being the “trailing spouse” to my husband’s career. For about 10 years I changed jobs frequently as we moved, and, especially when we were in Europe, I was not always able to find work or satisfactory child care that would allow me to work. When I was in Germany, I just didn’t see other married women with children in technical positions at my workplace. Restarting after an extended gap in employment was especially difficult due to the technical nature of this work—your effectiveness is in proportion to the depth of your knowledge, and after about 6 months of not working, you tend to forget most of what you know.

Very early in my professional life, when I was in manufacturing, I remember one older gentleman telling me, “You’re a nice girl—you should be home having babies.” I wasn’t offended, though; I knew him pretty well and he meant to be kind. I was more upset when another older coworker told me he hadn’t allowed his daughter to go to college, since it would be a waste since she would only get married. So that kind of attitude was always out there, and it probably would have become a problem eventually as I became more experienced and wanted more responsibility.

RE: What advice would you give employers to help them get a more diverse (yet qualified) mix of job applicants?

DW: Work through a top-tier contract house to find applicants. I have worked as a contractor a few times, always through the same contract house, because I trust them. I maintain good relationships with my recruiters there and they’ve helped me find work when I’ve been laid off.

We have a local group here, DetroitNet—it’s for networking in the sense of local IT professionals just getting to know each other with no pressure. Recruiters are welcome but cautioned against being “that guy.” Their blog has a regular feature detailing the myriad ways to avoid being offensive to the culture of the group. Attendance at their events has been growing rapidly, and it appeals to me because of the focus on building real relationships. So I figure if these are the ways I find work and make contacts, they are also the ways employers can find me and people like me. Employers should also get their current employees to refer friends that would be a good addition to the organization.

I would also suggest sending your technical people to the well-respected content-based conferences like LISA. It puts the employer in a positive light, and the employee who attends can be a good representative for the company, and will be in contact with potentially hundreds of highly competent peers. I know that I’m impressed with companies that send their employees or become conference sponsors.

RE: If you could offer one piece of career advice to a woman joining a predominately male team, what would it be? And what advice would you have for her employer and colleagues to help them make the work environment inviting, friendly, and productive?

DW: I would tell her to be confident and expect to be treated well. Be confident because they hired you, they’re paying you, so that means they want you there. If there had been any dissent or reservations about having you join the group, those conversations have already taken place and the issues have been settled. We’re paid pretty well for this work, and the employer is paying you that much because they want you there.

Expect to be treated well, because I can honestly say that the vast majority of my male coworkers have been overwhelmingly positive and easy to work with. For the most part, we are all hooked on technology and even if you don’t have anything else in common, you can always talk about the work and the nuances of the OS. Nearly every workgroup I’ve been in has been more concerned about doing excellent work and living up to the trust the company has placed in us. I still remember one coworker who told me “Don’t worry—I’ve got your back” when I called him for help after hours. That was years ago and it is still so meaningful to me.

People will follow your lead, and your non-verbal communication will be influenced by your mindset. So trust that you will be welcomed, your male coworkers are good guys, and you are all going to do interesting and challenging work.

For the employers and colleagues—I can say that the places I’ve been happiest to work are the ones where each team member is treated like a unique individual; everyone can just be who they are. One of the delightful things for me about working in IT are the fascinating, quirky coworkers, often with astounding intellects. When it’s acceptable and normal to be different in all kind of ways, then I feel really comfortable. The worst place I ever worked, the majority of the team and management were all nearly identical in age, marital status, gender, and ethnicity. Those of us who didn’t share those traits were marginalized.

As a working mother with children at home, the more lead time I had to plan my work, the better. I could make arrangements to work late, work weekends, etc., but I needed time to get it lined up. It was difficult for me to turn on a dime back then. So flexible working hours and the ability to telecommute were big helps, but what made the difference was being able to plan. My last job, we set up our on-call schedule for the whole year at a time. I was never blindsided, and I could adjust my family’s expectations in advance so I could completely focus on my on-call responsibilities when it was my turn.

RE: Which specific resources (websites, mailing lists, events, etc.) have been most helpful for you in your career?

DW:

RE: How has mentoring (being a mentor or mentee) influenced your career?

DW: So far, the best results have come from informal mentoring. I get a lot of satisfaction now helping people grow and develop to reach their potential, whenever I can find an opportunity to do that. I hope to do some mentoring through LOPSA this year.

I’ve benefitted from being the mentee, as well; I had one team leader who really invested a lot of time to help me assimilate into the workgroup and gain visibility in the larger organization.

Corporate initiatives, where I was paired with a mentor I didn’t know, didn’t really click with me—it seemed too open ended, where the mentor said basically, “OK let me know if I can help you”, and I just had no idea how to move forward. In the situation where the mentor/mentee don’t know each other and have no history, it’s necessary to treat it like a short-term project, with a specific goal, like learning to interact with leadership in some way, or developing technical skills for a specific work assignment.

RE: Anything you'd like to add?

DW: Being a sysadmin has been a wonderful career path for me, as a working mom. I think this is a great time to be in the field and I would encourage women to include this role at some point in their career. It’s tough and demanding work, it changes you for the better, I think. Even if it isn’t your ultimate career goal, it’s good to have in your background.

Over the past couple years, I’ve been so happy to see the goodwill expressed from the majority of male sysadmins toward their female coworkers. It’s very much a sense of “we’re all in this together.”

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In the 2nd USENIX Women in Advanced Computing Summit (WiAC '13), we will continue to bring the technical community together to discuss some of the challenges women face in the professional computing world. Beyond mere discussion, we hope to engage all attendees to share ideas, best practices, and knowledge to move us forward in our professional capacity as technical people.