Nerf guns, action dolls, giant slides, Lego models, and unicycles --these are the things that make a technology company the coolest place to be.

But some women engineers say the toy-filled wonderland that is Silicon Valley is no fun at all. It makes them feel lonely, isolated, and out of place.

The problem, however, may have more to do with age than gender.

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Monika Khushf, director of engineering at Intuit, has made a documentary film that reveals the effects of Silicon Valley work culture on women engineers.

Khushf put together a short video titled "Valley of the Boys" as part of her 1999 master's thesis project at the University of California at Berkeley. She interviewed men and women engineers from major technology companies, including Sun Microsystems, Apple Computer, Intuit, Electronic Arts, and Netscape Communications.

"The big discovery was finding out that most of the other women felt the same way I did," Khushf said. "When I started out, I thought I was the only one who felt like I didn't fit in."

The film attempts to capture what Khushf calls "the geek culture" that permeates many computer companies.

Male engineers chase each other down the hallway as part of the requisite nerf gun fights. Some play Foosball or videogames endlessly. Others spend time at work and often over the weekend constructing elaborate models of cities using blocks of Legos.

There is even a soda-can version of the Golden Gate Bridge, created in a moment of "late-night creativity."

The men clearly seem to be enjoying themselves.

The women in the film, on the other hand, look bored, irritated, or at best resigned as they watch their colleagues have a good time.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm the mom, like I'm no fun," says one of them. "They're having a great old time ... and I'm sitting there going 'Oh, please!'"

They express frustration with team-building exercises that mostly involve competitive male-oriented activities, such as trips to the video arcade. Some speak of being criticized in reviews for their inability to bond with their peers. Others describe failed attempts to connect with their male peers.

"I think they just didn't know what to do with me," says a senior software engineer who joined an all-male team.

And the inability to connect makes them feel isolated and insecure.

Intuit engineer Claudia Carpenter, one of the women interviewed for the video, says bonding is an important issue for most women, who need to feel connected to the people they work with. When competitive games and toys are the only available means of connecting, women often feel left out.

"It just doesn't feel satisfying and a lot of women just fall off," she said. "The environment isn't soul-nourishing for women. There's something missing."

It also affects the woman's ability to work smoothly with her peers, she said.

Cathy Richardson, a senior engineer at the Compaq Western Research Laboratory, says the negative effects of this social disconnect between male and female engineers are often subconscious. The film itself portrays male engineers not as malicious or hostile, but as well-intentioned and mostly unaware of how the women feel.

"Most discrimination against women (in the technology industry) is not intentional," Richardson said. "Younger men don't have the social skills or familiarity with women ... to work with them. So they choose not to interact with you if you choose not participate in these kinds of things."