Thoughts regarding QWERTY and Dvorak, based on my experience doing clerical work in 1993-96...(posted 8748 days ago)(1) Temp agencies and potential employers would always give me a typing test. This was done on a DOS-based machine with a QWERTY keyboard. Even if I could have typed faster on a Dvorak keyboard, I don't think I could have done much to demonstrate that skill to the tester; the staff administering the test would probably not respond well to "here, before you run that testing program on me, let me reconfigure your computer". Also, I suspect that very few people at any company would know whether the desktop machines in use could be easily reconfigured to use Dvorak keyboards; if their decision about whether to hire or not hire me depended on that one piece of information, how much effort would they be willing to spend to obtain it?
(2) Secretaries and other office workers have to do more than just type. For every job, employers will usually post some threshold of typing speed required (e.g., 40 words per minute), but once I'm above that threshold, how much more employable does an extra 10 wpm make me? And therefore, if I'm trying to learn something to improve my employability, is learning the Dvorak layout really the best use of my time?
(3) So, although I've known about the Dvorak keyboard since middle school, I've never bothered learning it. (When I was in high school, we had an Apple //c computer, which had a "keyboard" button that switched to Dvorak. So back then, I even had the opportunity to learn it.)