Re: Is the job market really *that* bad? (long)

["Chuck Martin" <twriter -at- sonic -dot- net>]

"Andrew Plato" <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote in message
news:112141 -at- techwr-l -dot-  -dot-  -dot- 
>
> "Elna Tymes" wrote...
>
> > At the risk of incurring Andrew Plato's highly unfocused wrath,
> > I'd like to
> > point out that he's about 180 degrees out of sync with the reality of
> the
> > Silicon Valley job market - for both permanent and contract writers.
> > We're been in the middle of it all along, not smugly focused on whatever
> > passes for a
> > job market in the Portland, Oregon area plus contracts his firm can land
> > by heavy telemarketing.

>
> Okay - the Silicon Valley job market is bad: for recruiters and lower-end
> tech writers.  But there is business. It's there. You just have to be in
> the right places.  I agree that job boards are a waste of time. 99% of the
> jobs are, like you said, are ghost jobs. You have to be inside talking
> with decision makers, not outside talking with recruiters.

It's not just the job boards. craigslist, which gets a lot of listing
directly from companies, bypassing recruiters of all sorts, has fewer and
fewer technical writer listings--although I can't say I'm as much an
authority on that as I was 6 months ago.

<snip>
>
> But, we have good tech writing jobs as well. However, I will say that the
> tone of clients has changed. The days of long projects where we could
> design templates and discuss user readability are very much gone. Our
> projects are either long-term outsourcing arrangements or "quick n' dirty,
> get the docs done and leave" contracts.

This would concern me because it smacks of a "product first" attitude among
companies rather than a "user first" attitude--and not just for the docs.
Time and time again, it has been shown that better products almost always do
better in the long term than first-to-market products. (DON'T bring up beta
vs. VHS.) Yet despite this evidence, companies push unusable products out
the door to beat the competitors that are left. Oh yeah, and the docs are
tacked on as an afterthought.

<snip>

Now I have to say that I'm feeling rather lucky at the moment. At my current
company, I converted from contract to staff (despite the commute) at the
beginning of May, and then just last week close to 1/3 of the people were
laid off. I stayed, as the only staff technical writer. But then, I've
already been reading up on XML to better understand the workings of our
web-based application (and also so I can offer a presentation to next year's
Online Help Conference), planning to take a JavaScript night course this
fall to advance my web programming skills, and continuing to do more than
"just" writing here, including working with some of our web developers to
re-architect our home-grown HTML-based (actually, XML- and XHTML-based) Help
system. Still, knowing that technical writers are often the first cut, I was
still nervous, despite all that I had done already.

--
--
"I don't entirely understand it but it is true: Highly skilled
carpenters don't get insulted when told they are not architects,
but highly skilled programmers do get insulted when told
they are not UI designers."
     - anonymous programmer quoted in "GUI Bloopers"

Chuck Martin
User Assistance & Experience Engineer
twriter "at" sonic "dot" net      www.writeforyou.com



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