Re: Status of the Technical Writer

["Melissa Nelson" <melmis36 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

I work for a government contractor. On some of our contracts I do the 
technical writing and then it gets sent to someone in the military who 
basically takes my writing and cuts and pastes it into official documents.

Also as far as the technical writer being on par with secretaries etc..one 
of the biggest government contractors in the business classifies technical 
writers as "administration" for some of their contracts and not for 
others...the contracts where they are classified as admin pay about $25-30K 
less. I was very excited to get called into their local branch office for an 
interview a couple of years ago, until I found out that this was a contract 
where I would be classified "admin" and what the salary was...talk about a 
huge let-down.

Melissa




>From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
>To: "Lauren" <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>,"'Techwr-l'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
>Subject: Re: Status of the Technical Writer
>Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 16:16:21 -0700
>
>In the federal government, it pretty much always has been.  The
>content of documents in federal agencies is drafted by technical
>and field staff, and "technical writers" (if any are used) review,
>edit and update to ensure that documents comply with applicable
>agency and dept-specific requirements.  The "technical" part is
>understanding the *document* requirements (which are usually
>at least as complicated as filling out your income taxes).  Most
>"technology" employed by government is produced by
>private-sector contractors, and the "tehcnological technical
>writing" is done there.
>
>I have no experience with government documentation on the
>state or local levels, but I would expect them to be similar.
>
>Gene Kim-Eng
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Lauren" <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>
>
> > Has the position of TW really been reduced to a temporary agency type of 
>job
> > that is really not very specialized?  I thought that technical writing
> > should be in contracts that are written for development and engineering
> > projects.  But the development-focused contracts that I have read do not
> > include them.
>
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