Other than writing and communication abilities, I think one of the reasons I am successful in IT is that I often know half a dozen ways or more to do the same thing. Most IT people know one, maybe two.

For instance, I was just trying to copy a directory structure but not the files, and then move the entire structure somewhere else that is (supposedly) firewall-restricted and has no copy and paste ability. The first few things I tried did not work. This is where most IT people would’ve been halted. But I pulled out some IT jiu jitsu from the 1980s and got the dir struct copied and then ferried off to where it needed to be. This structure would be impossible to recreate by hand, as it involves a few thousand nested directories.

I know that anyone can learn IT, and I understand how the mythology of “I’ve been doing this my whole life” can harm women and others, but at the same time there is definitely some difference when you’e been doing this shit since you were four years old.