RE: Is being technical writer boring

[Rose -dot- Wilcox -at- pinnaclewest -dot- com]

<<

I hate to get all New Age on ya, but being bored is a choice. >>

Mebee... But ...

<<If you do the least amount and variety of work you can get away with,
any job is boring. >>

If you are given tasks that are too easy or impossible, do everything
you can to change it and are stymied, are isolated from your team and
the company at large, you could be bored by that.  (I tried to look for
work in this situation, but it was right at the beginning of the bust.
Nothing was available.  I stuck in for months, trying to change the
situation by walking through the team area and trying to talk to people
everyday, asking my bosses for help, bribing developers, everything in
my teen-years of experience bag of tricks.  I ended up depressed and
working on my own writing.  Amazed that I continued to get paid for
doing very little work.  But I kept trying and eventually a new project
manager came on board and started trying to use me as a personal
assistant.  At least it was work.  Later, I was transferred to a
different department and got a lot of work, got noticed throughout the
company and now I have a good rep.  So when they transferred me back
here I was very afraid, but the sitch had changed and I get a fair
amount of work now.)

My point is that there are other ways jobs can be boring.  Sometimes
bosses even hinder you from innovation, improving processes, etc.

Most of my jobs match the following paragraph:

<<
If you notice and grab the opportunities to do different, new things and
improve the processes and products around you, no job is boring. Even
when none of the latter is possible, there is usually some compensation
in the form of time or other resources that gives you a chance to do all
kinds of fascinating things, job related or not. 
>>

But in this job, it was the non-job-related that saved me during the low
months.  I had no access to any job-related improvements of any kind.
So I wrote essays and non-fiction articles on the web and got my feet
wet with other kinds of writing.  Otherwise, I would've gone stark
raving mad.  However, it put me in dissonance with my ethics and I sat
waiting to get fired.  The only thing I can say that makes it okay with
my ethics is that they appeared to want the results they got, and, not
only did I survive the experience, I ended up being able to not only
find another place in the company where my skills were required, I also
was able to come back here and triumph in the end.  :-)  

Another case of being bored was a company that had a established
technical writing group.  They interviewed me and hired me on the basis
of my being a senior technical writer, then they gave me junior tech
writing tasks, oversupervised me (one guy stood behind me and told me
how to draw the lines on my Visio diagram!), and were fiercely resistant
to changes or improvements.  When I quit, they talked me into staying,
and the next lead they put me under gave me no work at all.  There was
so much vigilance that non-job-related tasks were also not possible.  So
I had to quit a second time.  The second time took.  Later I met with a
coworker from that job when she was looking for work.  She suggested I
go back there.  I was kind of surprised she thought they would hire me
after I quit twice!

And one more case, and lest I seem to be perennially bored, these are
all the exceptions in an otherwise stellar career (been working as a
tech writer since 1984 and contracted a lot, so I have a lot of
stories).... I was doing maintenance on manuals written in passive voice
and organized by screen... I was frustrated because we couldn't create
quality.  In addition, there wasn't enough work and it wasn't
challenging.  I made a proposal to update the manuals to a more active,
task-oriented library, but the proposal was shot down.  I asked to do
more challenging work.  So they switched me to reading code and writing
system documentation, which I like.  *THEY THEN PROCEDED TO HAVE A
DEVELOPER READ THE CODE FOR ME* and *TELL ME WHAT TO WRITE*.  That was
going to be the fun part.  I don't understand what part of "I can read
code" you don't understand??!?!?!

Those two jobs were the only two contracts I quit in 19 years of
contracting.  Boredom is the worst torture!

Oh and on the subject "Is technical writing boring?" my general answer
is no.  And usually I think a job is what you make it as well.  But
sometimes, only sometimes, a job just sucks and there is nothing you can
do about it.  If you do your best to change it and it doesn't change,
you can only either quit and move on, or live with it the best you can.
That's life.  My experience tells me that I can make a difference in a
job with my response to it, but that some jobs the best response is to
just leave.   

Who knows?  Maybe by leaving, something changes?  So even if you
couldn't change the job by staying, you might change it by leaving.  

Anyway, enough war stories from me for the day!

Rose A. Wilcox
CHQ, 17th Floor
Tranz1 QA/Documentation
602-250-2435
Rose -dot- Wilcox -at- PinnacleWest -dot- com
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy
enough people to make it worth the effort." - Herm Albright