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Re: Top Ten Things You'd Like To Tell Engineers

Subject: Re: Top Ten Things You'd Like To Tell Engineers
From: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2004 12:20:14 -0400


On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 07:48:47 -0700 (PDT), Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> wrote:

-----------------------------------
written_by wrote a lot about a situation he worked in, so much,
in fact that I won't be including any of it here.
-----------------------------------
... It sounds like the problems "written_by" was experiencing had
more to do with management than with the engineers.....sure, maybe
the engineers somehow hyjacked management, but then that's still
a management problem.

Precisely. Quality is not made by the folks in the quality lab, nor
by the laborers on the shop floor, nor by the inspectors. Quality
is made by the top management, the Board Room. They determine the
policies that allow "ship it anyway" to win over "not good enough."
They send the managers to a flavor-of-the-month quality seminar and
permit that to constitute attention to quality. They set up rewards
for "team player" inspectors and punishments for any individual who
is seen as stopping production. Often they make stupid decisions
without proper regard for unintended consequences, and sometimes
they simply fail to observe things that are wrong, but it's still a
management problem.

What's a tech writer supposed to do? Same as in any other failing
company. Get out and go somewhere else. The only other alternative
is to take over, wresting power from top management, and I'm pretty
sure no one's done that directly from a tech writing position.

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Re: Top Ten Things You'd Like To Tell Engineers: From: Sean Hower

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