I work in IT. I'm one of these strange little creatures that works on both the tech and design side of the fence. I specialise in usability design, designing things so that they are easy to use as well as fulfilling their function. I have both design and programming skills. So not only can I design you a pretty website, I can make it user-friendly and then I can build the damned thing.

My company usually gets brought in like an architect. Someone wants to build something for a particular purpose. So an architect gets brought in to analyse the problem and then come up with an elegant design solution. Then the plans get handed to the builders to create it.

That's what I do.

And I cop a lot of shit for it.

I'm 'just the graphic designer'. I'm 'just a skirt'. What do I know about the big, bad world of back ends, databases and server-side apps?

You see, the people I work with are usually men. They assume that I have been brought in to make them look stupid. Or that I'm taking away the 'fun' part of the job for them.

"What do we need her for? We can design it! Design is easy, anyone can do it."

What they don’t understand is that I'm there to make them look good. To bring my knowledge to bear to help them build something great. Something they will get kudos for, not me. And, as anyone in the design industry knows, design is HARD.

I have had to call time-outs during design sessions to prevent fights breaking out. I have had to throw people out of meetings. I have faced sexist and abusive comments. I'm just the chickie-babe who was sent in to make the design look pretty.

So you can imagine my joy when one of these characters was dropped in it up to his neck recently. Turns out that a 'gentleman' (I use the quotes advisedly) that I worked with masterminded a plan which ended up losing the company three quarter of a million dollars.

I know it's not ladylike to gloat, but karmic retribution can be a wonderful thing.