In the past week I had to deal with tech support, both chat and phone to resolve two issues: replace lost phone (mine), and reissue an SSL cert on a domain (work). In both cases, the first tech support responders were men. They read me irrelevant and unhelpfull shit from some script, and told me the problem was unsolvable (port number to new phone), or 'would be' solved (SSL), except it wasn't solved. They went through the motions, had no clue, and didn't give a flying fuck about me or my little 'problems.'

Fortunately, though, on my second go round (for the phone) and fifth (SSL), I got connected to women support people. They quickly drilled in, identified what needed to happen, and it did. They acted like they actually (sorry William!) wanted to help -- and more importantly, they did.

Men 0
Women 2

If you flip coins, sometimes you get all heads except one tail, and sometimes you get all tails except one head.

Numbers don't lie.

Men 0
Women 2

What Peter said.

Also, probably as a result of tradition, recruiting prejudices, and stuff, more men get tech support roles, so more likely to get a man on the phone so more likely that if it's a useless twat then it's also male. 

Also, same reasons, when you do get a woman on the phone, she may well have to do better to be seen as equal, hence less likely to be useless twat.

The scumbag motherfucker SSL support guy even tried to upsell me, after telling me the cert had been reissued (it wasn't).  >-|

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Already using it. Not available on hosting platform.

Well, a lot of the time when you get women in tech support, it is because they have an interest in tech and have to work harder to be taken seriously and to get where they are. Things are getting better thankfully, but there is still a whiff around in places that technology is a "mans game", and unfortunately some guys really aren't that good at it.

Yep, this is pretty much what I came to say. I've worked with a lot of fantastic engineers, but also plenty of naff ones who are just kind of there by default.

Most of the women I've worked with in IT, especially older ones, have had to work really hard to prove themselves and made a deliberate effort to become engineers/consultants/etc. As such, I have to say, I can't think of any woman I've worked with who I wouldn't consider very good. But, the same size is sadly very small - lots of women in project management and business generally, but I see very few beyond helpdesk.

Yeah, I've had the same experience. During my career in IT, I've worked with two female bosses (both of which were very good), and several other female colleagues as well. I can't think of a bad one to be honest.

The female colleague at my first job wasn't quite as technically skilled as I was, but she knew her limits, did a good job overall and wasn't afraid to ask advice if stuck with something.

Contrast that with some male techs I've come across that just blundered on, made a hash of things and refused to acknowledge their own limitations...

Too true!