[barrystaes]

I guess in that time it was not a position, and secretaries where expected to do the “compute” jobs. So mostly ladies learned programming, on the side as it where. They learned it on the job.

Programmer was not a career/job yet. There where no schools or papers yet.

So an interview would be about secretary tasks like calculus and bookkeeping, perhaps ask if you know how to type already. (Big deal back then) Source: my mom.

[cafard]

A woman I met in the late 80s had been programming for twenty or twenty-five years. As I recall, she had taken some kind of an aptitude test at IBM, then been put through training.