RE: Still Seeking Your Thoughts About Technical Skills

["Stitzel, Ken" <kstitzel -at- itc -dot- nrcs -dot- usda -dot- gov>]

Thought I'd throw my hat, er, list into the ring and announce my candidacy,
er, response to Ted Engel's query.

Preface: 
* My cynical experiential theory of tech writing:
	- about 1/3 of the job is being able to write/edit/organize
	- about 1/3 is people skills (i.e., ability to schmooze
	  information out of technical folk)
	- about 1/3 is tool knowledge. 

* Cautionary tale: Most employers only care about tool knowledge 
  and assume you have all the rest if they think about it at all.

* Additional theory 1:
  What makes you seem cutting edge to an employer varies wildly 
  and is not necessarily what makes you cutting edge in the
  tech writing community. Obvious example: InDesign/Photoshop/
  FreeHand/Illustrator may seem very sexy to do cool stuff (if 
  that's your bag under the broad description of tech writing), 
  but it obviously does you little good for with a company
  that doesn't use it.

* Additional theory 1:
  You have to be able to learn new (or new-to-you) software
  relatively quickly to survive as a tech writer.

* Additional theory 2:
  The more you can do what your employer's techies do,
  the more cutting edge you will seem to that employer.

That said, my humble list of specifics follows, with a bit of context....

Current job:

* Federal gov't, all Microsoft, creating software for Agri-Feds

* Basic skills: MS Word, FrontPage 
	(both of which I often find frustrating and irksome)

* Cutting edge: ability to create .NET apps 

* Very helpful: PVCS source control system


Last year:

* Energy industry (software & hardware for gizmos to go onto
  gigantic pipeline pump engines)

* Basic skills: 
	PageMaker
	FrameMaker
	basic graphics package like Paint Shop Pro

* Cutting edge: 
	ability to manipulate and adapt AutoCAD drawings 
	for manuals. (Like many hardware firms, this place
	relied on AutoCAD drawings by the hundreds.)


Two years ago:

* Enterprise Unix OS software for software installation 
  and OS patching

* Basic skills: 
	FrameMaker+SGML
	basic Unix commands
	VI
	emacs 
	gimp or other graphics packages 

* Cutting edge: 
	XML/XSLT, used to maintain web pages that had to 
	conform to a Byzantine company-enforced style standard.
	Looked VERY promising for implementing a single-sourcing
	system consisting almost entirely of free software.

	any kind of scripting or programming that would automate 
	any of your tasks
	
* Very helpful: 
	ClearCase source control system

* Cautionary tale 1: 
	Ignoring 14,000 Unix users, the rest of the company 
	believed the entire world revolved around MS Office 
	apps and sometimes required their use)

* Cautionary tale 2:
	Ignoring the promise of the XML/XSLT stuff, my group
	seemed about to make a very expensive (mis?)investment 
	in some kind of proprietary single-sourcing system.

All the usual generic cautions apply. YMMV. This message presented on
100-percent recycled electrons. No technical writers were harmed during the
creation of this message, though the author will probably be abused at some
later date. Hope this (somehow) helps. 

Ken Stitzel

Rent-a-Fed documentation specialist (for about another two weeks)


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