Re: assessing a lone-writer gig

["Barry Campbell" <barry -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com>]

These are all reasonable questions to ask, Sydney, but as someone who
has worked for a couple of startup businesses in my career, and has
set up writing and training departments for them, I can tell you that
the usual model is "everybody does everything all the time," the work
will be intense, and the hours will be long.

As the requests for your time and help stream in, you are going to
have to push back (hard) and set priorities through a ruthless and
ongoing process of triage, and you are going to have to be in
communication constantly with management to let them know what you're
working on and what's waiting in the queue.  If you earn and maintain
support from management, you'll be just fine, although you will work
very, very hard.

If you don't get support from management, it's pretty much a death march.

(Note that this is generally true of tech writing jobs anywhere, but
especially so with a startup.)

I love working for startups. :-)  But it's not for everyone.

If you decide to take the plunge, there is a book (out of print but
available through used booksellers) that you should really try to get
your hands on: Peter Hartman's "Starting A Documentation Group: A
Hands-On Guide" (ISBN: 0967417902)

- bc

-- 
Barry Campbell -- <barry -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com>
Blog: http://campbell-online.com
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