Re: them engineers

[Glen Warner <gdwarner -at- ricochet -dot- net>]

"Smith, Martin" <martin -dot- smith -at- encorp -dot- com> wrote:

(*snip*)

> The lack of respect issue is one that I have battled my entire 
career, often
> because of engineers' bad experiences with technical writers in the 
past. I
> have simply come to accept the fact that I will have to prove myself 
each
> time I begin working with a new group of people. Generally this 
entails
> demonstrating an ability to accurately comprehend the source 
material and
> produce meaningful documents with a minimum of hand holding.

I had the displeasure of interviewing a rather nasty engineer once.

The engineer had designed the project I was writing the documentation 
for and wrote the installation procedure for this device.  I wanted to 
get the technician's take on the engineer's installation procedure ... 
but, alas, the tech wasn't there, and my supervisor sent me to the 
engineer -- against my better judgement.

Long story short, lots of finger jabbing, closely followed by "use 
what I 
#*^&'ing wrote!"

Complained to his boss, who apologized about the incident, and 
explained that the engineer's people skills were lacking, but he was a 
good engineer. :o\

Deadline was approaching.  I cleaned up the text (typos) and hoped for 
the best.

Now, I'm a fairly technically competent kind of guy:  14 years in the 
Navy as a technician, picked up a technical writing certificate at a 
local community college (Bellevue Community College, with a 
concentration on programming) and I play with computers for fun ... so 
I could understand what the engineer wrote -- but I wanted a 
technician's perspective.  Having done a turn as a technician trying 
to repair equipment with badly written documents, I know the 
technician's point of view was important.

So ... the UW's program is good, huh?  Do they accept transfer 
credits?  My certificate isn't getting me any work .....

--gdw
 
> Martin