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Subject:Re: Need help please From:edunn -at- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 30 Oct 2001 15:59:29 -0500
Hold-on just a moment! Watch what you're saying Anamaria.
Nothing in Nancy's post leads us to believe that the VP of Marketing is:
"a wacko"
"couldn't construct a coherent sentence"
"a megalomaniac without a clue"
And so far as "marketing and documentation have different agendas", Nancy said
it was a small company. Is the company large enough to have a documentation
department as well as a marketing department?
Lets all rein in the collective gut wrenching about whether our work is valued
more whether we are placed under Marketing, Engineering, Documentation, or Food
Services.
Also lets all drop the barefaced prejudice against job titles. This looks just
like the panic over *GASP* an Executive Assistant *HORRORS* signing off on
documentation. Sorry for the language, but talk about a pissing contest. The
only legitimate complaint I saw during that thread was that the Admin. Asst. was
overworked.
If the VP in question is competent, who cares if documentation goes through
marketing? If you do, why? If the marketing writers are competent at putting out
technical info and marketing info why not leverage them to their full potential.
If a TW can determine audience and write to different audiences in different
delivery mediums why can't marketing writers?
If Nancy can give evidence that the situation is the environment such that "the
facts get laundered in the promotion--sometimes bleached beyond
recognition", or the marketing VP is plagiarizing, or "launder[ing] the text to
serve his interests", or doing it purely to "stroke himself in control/command
mode", then maybe I'd agree.
Otherwise accept the situation and get on with your work. Unless there are
actual complaints/problems there is nothing to outsmart or negotiate. I fail to
even see any stupidity. Trying to subvert or outsmart a VP sounds like decent
grounds for dismissal to me.
Nancy, if there is really a problem tell us exactly what it is. If the only
problem is the titles of the workers then I suggest you have a bad case of
'title-itis', nothing more.
Eric L. Dunn
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