Over the years, I've heard a lot about a supposed old girls' network. You know what I mean by this: the old, white men who used to run industry are slowly being joined by a cadre of women who exert similar power.

Take this piece in the Washington Post, by Carrie Johnson, about just such a network in techology.

Fewer women enroll in college-level computer science courses today than 20 years ago. Female entrepreneurs collect a pittance of the venture capital handed out by money men. The region's tech millionaires are mostly white males approaching middle age.

Yet the doom-filled studies all neglect a phenomenon that's thriving, though often invisible: a groundswell among women with technical skills to recruit more of their own into well-paying, intellectually challenging professions. Nowhere is this practice more evident than in the virtual communities and user groups that tech-savvy women are creating for themselves.

A similar trend is seen in Hollywood, says the New York Times' Nancy Hass:

Four of the six major studios have women in the top creative decision-making roles, as Ms. Berman joins Stacey Snider, chairman of Universal; Amy Pascal, chairman of Sony Pictures; and Nina Jacobson, president of Walt Disney Company's Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group. Earlier this month, Ms. Snider announced that Mary Parent and Scott Stuber, would be stepping down as vice chairmen at Universal to become producers on the lot; their replacement is Donna Langley, the Universal executive who oversaw "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" and "In Good Company."

Though men still figure most prominently in the corporate echelons of the media companies that own the studios, and talent agencies like William Morris and Creative Artists Agency are still male dominated, these women, who over the years have fought and fostered one another as part of a loose sisterhood, have finally buried the notion that Hollywood is a man's world.

Kate Stone Lombardi laments in the NYT about having to claw her way into a writing career before such a network existed:

I didn't have much guidance. I remember being frustrated a good deal of the time. All of my bosses were male. Several of them made advances, but “sexual harassment” was not yet in the public lexicon, at least not on Capitol Hill. Instead, you ducked away gracefully, taking care not to antagonize the man to whom you still had to report.

Here's what strikes me. The female workforce is far more fluid for reasons that include family, career goals and changing personal needs. That means that even as women scrabble their way into top jobs, they may quickly leave those posts and be replaced—most often—by men.

And then what?

Some who leave reach back to help those who stay behind. This from BusinessWeek:

Few women in the venture-capital community understand the power of branding better than Isabella Capital founder Peg Wyant, a former general manager for Procter & Gamble. Now, Wyant wants to brand Isabella Capital the top venture-capitalist firm led by women, specializing in women's startups.

As a case study, I offer up my own workplace. I'm pretty sure the term "old boys network" was coined by TIME. There are still staffers who remember the days when newly hired women were shuttled to the researcher's pen, while men with the exact same degrees and experience were ushered on to the writing track. By a year ago, some of the names highest on the masthead belonged to women. The second in command, along with the editors who ran international coverage, the human interest section, arts, photos, copy, plus our marquee writers—all were women.

And then something shifted. Our deputy, Priscilla Painton, left after two decades at TIME to seek a second career—as it turned out, in book publishing. A few other top editors and writers left, some of them disillusioned by the new direction of the magazine, others wanting a different work-life balance. Some were pushed out in the restructuring.

We still have women in important jobs at my workplace, as you probably do in yours; and while some have left, others have risen. But I've long felt that women simply have a different relationship to their jobs than do men. The old boys' network came about because a clutch of men hunkered down and became indispensable to their companies and industries, and thus were able to call the shots, including the hiring of more people just like them. We women don't seem to have that same territorial instinct about our jobs.

I think that doesn't have to hurt us, or to stop our sisters from trying to get a leg up. We just have to expand the definition of network beyond the company that happens to employ us just then. In fact, one editor who departed recently called to tell me about a job opening at a company where neither of us had ever worked.

That's the kind of old girl I want to be.

Fortune, our sister magazine, just came out with its annual list of the 100 best companies to work for (check out its dazzling web treatment, then buy the Feb. 4 issue, you cheapskate). Google is its top employer, and yes, it's like deja vu all over again: they ranked #1 last year, too.

What makes Google great? Watch this video, if you can (the audio was all scratchy on my player). The short answer is: great pay; awesome perks; room and incentive to grow.

I'm a little sick of all the gushing over Google. So your cafeteria features gourmet cuisine for free and you get chauffered to work on a company-owned shuttle bus with WiFi. So your stock is at $700 and your retirement is already financed at 28. So your boss is the Angel Gabriel and your company-provided iPhone is made of diamonds.

Enough. I want to know: how can I work there?

Getting a job at Google presents some immediate problems for me, the first among them being that all I know about computers is how to turn them on and off, and sometimes I get that part wrong. The closest I get to code is the gobbledygook that shows up while formatting my blog. What could I offer of value to the greatest, most selective employer in Silicon Valley?

Fortune offers some helpful hints:

These cool job openings aren't just for techies. Are you an animal health expert? Lawyer? Submarine cable negotiator? Time to send your resume.

Hmm. I'm not much of an animal person, let alone a vet. I didn't go to law school, opting instead for the much more practical and lucrative profession of writing. Submarine—what? I keep going down the list and see this: Director of Other.

I could do that! I am, if anything, the master of other! I don't know much, but everything I do know can be categorized under "other"! Here's the job description, via Fortune:

Google is known for collecting experts in any field it wants. It already has on staff a chief economist, a former bullfight promoter and an epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox. Now it's looking for an expert in "other." That's Googlespeak for the last part of the company's famous 70/20/10 work ethic, whereby employees spend 70 percent of their time on the core business, 20 percent on related projects, and 10 percent on other projects of their own initiative. Coding in Java isn't a requirement, but you must be a successful "inventor and builder."

So if I understand correctly, 100% of my time would be spent directing everybody else's 10% of downtime.

Google, I hereby submit myself for this job opening. I am an inventor of ideas, a builder of dreams. Plus I really like free cafeteria food. Hire me.

Fortune, our sister magazine, just came out with its annual list of the 100 best companies to work for (check out its dazzling web treatment, then buy the Feb. 4 issue, you cheapskate). Google is its top employer, and yes, it's like deja vu all over again: they ranked #1 last year, too.

What makes Google great? Watch this video, if you can (the audio was all scratchy on my player). The short answer is: great pay; awesome perks; room and incentive to grow.

I'm a little sick of all the gushing over Google. So your cafeteria features gourmet cuisine for free and you get chauffered to work on a company-owned shuttle bus with WiFi. So your stock is at $700 and your retirement is already financed at 28. So your boss is the Angel Gabriel and your company-provided iPhone is made of diamonds.

Enough. I want to know: how can I work there?

Getting a job at Google presents some immediate problems for me, the first among them being that all I know about computers is how to turn them on and off, and sometimes I get that part wrong. The closest I get to code is the gobbledygook that shows up while formatting my blog. What could I offer of value to the greatest, most selective employer in Silicon Valley?

Fortune offers some helpful hints:

These cool job openings aren't just for techies. Are you an animal health expert? Lawyer? Submarine cable negotiator? Time to send your resume.

Hmm. I'm not much of an animal person, let alone a vet. I didn't go to law school, opting instead for the much more practical and lucrative profession of writing. Submarine—what? I keep going down the list and see this: Director of Other.

I could do that! I am, if anything, the master of other! I don't know much, but everything I do know can be categorized under "other"! Here's the job description, via Fortune:

Google is known for collecting experts in any field it wants. It already has on staff a chief economist, a former bullfight promoter and an epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox. Now it's looking for an expert in "other." That's Googlespeak for the last part of the company's famous 70/20/10 work ethic, whereby employees spend 70 percent of their time on the core business, 20 percent on related projects, and 10 percent on other projects of their own initiative. Coding in Java isn't a requirement, but you must be a successful "inventor and builder."

So if I understand correctly, 100% of my time would be spent directing everybody else's 10% of downtime.

Google, I hereby submit myself for this job opening. I am an inventor of ideas, a builder of dreams. Plus I really like free cafeteria food. Hire me.

As far as I'm concerned, humans have three walking speeds: fast, slow and tourist. There's little that irritates me more on my morning commute through Times Square than getting stuck on a sidewalk behind a pack of Midwesterners who have decided against bipedal forward movement. Nothing against you folks from the middle states. I'm just saying that perhaps you spend a lot of time in cars and have forgotten or do not know that some commutes involve leg muscles.

I'm what you'd call a fast walker. When I had a baby, that was among the first things I had to learn: kids are a major drag on speed. On recent reporting trips made solo, I marveled at the sensation of being the first off the plane once again. It felt like victory.

Workdays involve a lot of movement, even for pregnant heifers like me. Need to chat with a colleague? I trot down the hall. Want to interview a source in Florida? I hop on a plane. Why, just this morning, I dropped off my kid at school, went to the gym, picked up a couple of books for my father, came home, made tea, and huffed up to my third-floor home office. Even with the widening frontal load, I can and do move around a lot in the course of my work day.

The books I bought for my father are Dave Barry's Money Secrets (Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar?) and a collection of bathroom jokes (scatological, yes, but also for reading in the water closet). He's laid up in the hospital and I thought he might want some diversion. His leg seized up after his recent trip to visit us, and he hasn't walked since. He's worried it means he won't get back to the office any time soon. I'm worried he won't get back, ever.

We take a lot for granted in our ability to work, don't we? It's so easy to let the little things annoy us, like that flock of high-school students blocking the entire intersection of 46th and Broadway as if everybody else in the world has only one agenda item today and that is to line up for TKTS tickets. Me, I harumph, and then I weave my way through their puffy-coated and texting mass, which I can do, even with my protruding belly. My pop, well, he'd have to wait till they all dispersed back to Milwaukee.

I don't often think of the ability to work as a blessing. But I should.