Re: A Question for Newbies and Intermediate Writers

[Fred Sampson <wfreds -at- cruzio -dot- com>]

I just finished a six-month internship in an established doc department, 
and moved from there to a very small tech pubs department at another 
company. The contrast in orientation styles is as day and night.

As a relative newbie to tech writing (I have plenty of writing and working 
experience, but hadn't pursued a tech writing career before), my 
recommendations are:

* Give your newbie a solid orientation/introduction to the company and to 
your department; context is valuable.
* Let your newbie know what the policies and procedures are, where to find 
the style guide and templates; if you don't have these, for shame!
* Give your newbie a rundown on who to go to for help, on network directory 
structure, on printer locations and controls, on all the tools the newbie 
will use . . . in other words, don't make the newbie waste time tracking 
these things down--someone in your department knows all this stuff, hand it 
over.
* If you have an editor, have the newbie get acquainted right away; if you 
use peer edits, say so, and hand over the style guide. And then tell your 
newbie what rules are regularly ignored.
* Make your newbie feel welcome. It's hard enough starting a new career and 
a new job without feeling like you shouldn't be there.
* Your newbie will make mistakes. That's how we learn. Let the mistakes be 
made on substantive style issues, on technical accuracy, on cultivating 
developers, not on losing a file because the newbie doesn't know which of 
your 10,000 directories it should go in.

Sounds to me like you're already considering these issues, since you're 
committed to avoiding the "on-the-job self-training program" I've seen too 
many times.

Good luck,

Fred Sampson
wfreds -at- cruzio -dot- com