RE: Fear and Loathing at the Job Site

["Diane Newbury" <dnewbury -at- execpc -dot- com>]

>>The biggest problem in the tech writing profession is that a large chunk
of the
profession honestly believes they can remain totally content-ignorant and be
accomplished and effective technical communicators. And these folks preach
this
BS to other writers, who fall lock-step inline with this stupidity. <<

This triggered a related thought, on a topic that drives ME nearly as crazy
as the above topic drives you. I do a lot of training on software products,
so I am familiar with the training industry, as well. The most common and
most frustrating comment that I hear again and again is: "A good trainer can
train anything." This is usually interpreted to mean that the trainer does
not need to know anything about what they are training -- "good" training
techniques are all they need, or so a large number of these folks truly
believe. This is usually accompanied by all their "war" stories of walking
into a classroom cold, never having seen nor touched the particular software
product, never having seen nor touched the training material before that
day, etc., etc. and "doing the best training job of my life." Having been on
the receiving end of some of this training in my corporate days, I can state
unequivocally that many (most?) of the students in such a classroom are not
fooled, not impressed, just going along for the ride. People won't say much
if the company is giving them the time and money to attend such a class. On
the other hand, if these "I only need good techniques" trainers walk into an
adult ed classroom where the students are spending their own money and their
own time to take a class -- hooboy! Just try to walk in not knowing anything
about the topic/software!

Stepping down off of my own personal soapbox and slipping back into Lurk
Mode. :-)

Diane

Newbury Consulting LLC
dnewbury -at- execpc -dot- com


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