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Subject:Re: TW market in northern New Jersey From:John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Katie Henry <katie-henry -at- att -dot- net>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Wed, 7 Nov 2007 10:18:53 -0800 (PST)
This message addreses both the job market in NJ and the STC chapter.
As a tech writer in NJ and as President of the NYMetro STC chapter,
I'll try to address both.
> 1. A lot of the TW openings on the job boards are in the
> pharmaceutical industry and require many years of experience with
> functions and applications I've never even heard of. (My background
Yes, the pharm industry is alive and well in NJ. To be honest, I've
not been able to break into either.
> is in software and hardware documentation.) How would I would go
> about breaking into the pharma industry? Do I even WANT to break
> into the pharma industry? I get the impression that everything is
> extremely regimented and regulated. Are the jobs in pharma any fun?
My understanding of that field is, because it is so tightly
regulated, there is very little creativity and much burnout.
> Or interesting? How's the pay?
I honestly haven't the faintest idea
>
> 2. Does anybody know anyone who works for AT&T Labs? (Either
> location
> in NNJ.) How about Siemens? (Preferably the location in Florham
NJ has three things going for it. It does have a strong telecom
market. In NJ, you not only have ATT, but Lucent, Avaya, Vonage, and
other telecoms. You also have a strong financial market, as many
banks and brokerages in NY have their backrooms in NJ, and Essex
County NJ is only a 30 minutes bus, train, or ferry to Manhattan
> Park.) Any other leads for potential employers in engineering or
> R&D within about 15 miles of Maplewood/South Orange?
I happen to like Dice
> 3. The web site for the NY/NJ chapter of the STC refers to the
> national STC site for job listings. Are there a significant number
As the current President of the NY Metro STC chapter, I'm not
interested in carrying positions which require alot of maintenance
and overhead, that change so often, while there are so many large job
boards that do it better than we could.
Where we are trying to justify our membership is in the area of
programs and skills development. We've alresdy done programs on
wikis, localization, online help, Web 2.0, Agile, will be having
topics on human factors and Adobe's TechComm package conducted by RJ
and the people from Bright Path Solutions (Kay and Bernard), and Six
Sigma, and we've had speakers such as Hackos.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
"They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
So far, so good."
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