Re: Skills vs education (was: Senior technical writer?)

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

I was a design and test engineer in the aerospace industry
for about 15 years before I moved over into documentation.
During that time my PE license never made one bit of
difference in either my employability or my income, though
it was sometime entertaining to read the monthly journal
of NSPE and the endless chain of whining articles and letters
to the editor about the number of uncertified (and therefore
inherently inferior) people employed by various industries
as "engineers" (the quotation marks were invariably used to
signify that such people were merely pretenders to the title
despite the fact that they outnumbered us "true engineers" by
something like 10:1).  Putting "PE" after your name almost
always resulted in the equivalent of having "Arrogant Bastard"
stamped on your forehead by your overwhelmingly unlicensed
coworkers.  I let my license lapse about 20 years ago.  I can
read all this stuff on the internet now without having to pay
the annual dues.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Suzanne Chiles" <suzchiles -at- gmail -dot- com>