By Jill Hubbard Bowman (Intellectual Property Attorney, Independent)
Nearly every business model has a core technology. Your core technology may be a consumer item such as a back scrubber for the elderly, or it may be an online game, a smart phone or web application, or new plant variety, a pharmaceutical, or a better bra.
Whatever your core technology, the first thing you should do before you drop tens of thousands of dollars on web servers, manufacturers, SEO, and t-shirts or mugs with your company logo, is to file a good patent application. This is especially true if you have already spent over $10k paying people to help you develop it
... Read More... By Anna Lewis (Director of Recruiting, Fog Creek Software)
Computer science has always been a male-dominated field, right? Wrong.
In 1987, 42% of the software developers in America were women. And 34% of the systems analysts in America were women. Women had started to flock to computer science in the mid-1960s, during the early days of computing, when men were already dominating other technical professions but had yet to dominate the world of computing. For about two decades, the percentages of women who earned Computer Science degrees rose steadily, peaking at 37% in 1984.
In fact, for a hot second back in the mid-sixties, computer programming was actually portrayed as women’s work by the mass media. Check out “The Computer Girls” from the April 1967 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. It appeared between pieces called “The Bachelor Girls of Japan” and “A Dog Speaks: Why a Girl Should Own a Pooch.”
Don't worry, ladies. According to none other than Grace Hopper, programming is just like "planning a dinner."
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