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Subject:Re: working with developers, weird job interviews From:walter -dot- crockett -at- ascentialsoftware -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 10 May 2002 11:09:45 -0400
I can't imagine working in a place where I didn't have direct access to the
developers. (Well, I can imagine it, but I'd have to be pretty hard up, ie.
laid off.) It makes no sense at all for management to place barriers between
developers and tech writers. Given the proper interaction, we perform a
special kind of QA that is absolutely indispensable. That's one thing I love
about my current job. But in my short tech writing career with three
companies, I've never worked for a company where the engineers didn't openly
welcome and appreciate a tech writer who sought to understand what they were
trying to do.
Most of my job interviews have been fairly sane. The best was at Teradyne,
where they really understood the interview process, kept it concise and
focused, and required me to write a numbered procedure on the spot. The
worst was at a much younger company where they obviously had little
interviewing experience. They interviewed me for seven hours, including a
two-hour lunch at a restaurant with one of the company founders. I realized
about halfway into the day that I'd better stop trying to inject anything
about ME into the interviews, because they only wanted to talk about
themselves and their eyes started to glaze over whenever I mentioned my
qualifications for the job. Other than being self-absorbed, they were all
very polite, and left me thinking I'd be hired. I never heard from them
again.
Of course that was nothing compared to my experiences in San Francisco in
1965 at age 19. When I interviewed for a job at a bank,the interviewer
berated me for wearing a pale yellow dress shirt with my tie instead of a
white dress shirt. "You might dress like that back in New England, but it's
not acceptable in San Francisco," he said. Then he told me that if I wasn't
circumcised I should be sure to wash beneath my foreskin when I went for the
physical. I have nothing against cleanliness, but I decided to look
elsewhere. So I applied for a job at a coffeehouse. The interview was going
pretty well until the manager threw his arms around me in a big bear hug.
When I pushed him away, he called to some hulking lug in the corner, "Bruno,
throw this guy out."
I found the post office somewhat less sexually charged and got a job there
instead.
Walter Crockett
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