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McLauchlan, Kevin wrote:
>
> Leonard C. Porrello observed to Ned B:
>> The reason I asked what you studied is that I'm still wrestling with
>> your statements from an earlier post:
>>
>> "The minimum [qualification for a technical writer], to me, is a
> degree
>> in the technology you'll be documenting or editing".
>>
>> This criterion would easily (and unjustly) disqualify every technical
>> writer I've ever worked with. [...]
>
> I believe that this is one of the primary mechanisms by which creeping
> credentialism sets in.
>
> New writers (or wannabe writers) try to get their specific education and
> other credentials recognized as being pre-requisite requirements for a
> particular job or industry, such that they (the writer) will be a
> perfect fit when somebody comes looking.
Everybody plase pardon my typos, I've lost my glasses.
I jockeyed and kissed ass and gave flowers before I finally got my first
technical writing job. My writing was honed by three years in grad
school, but I couldn't code or solder or design effective instruction
content.
And it was realy really hard, harder than grad school on the stress
axis, not knowing the expectations of the people I worked with. I found
my place in the office culture alright, but the technical culture was
rough sledding because they don't educate, they just design and build.
If they could write and communicate, there would be no need for tech
writers. In may cases, their is no need because someone in there can and
does the writing, often a manual showing competence results.
I don't mind that, though it is hard, because what took me yaers of
gleaning, adapting, and hard work to learn on the job would be scarfed
up in a day or two for someone who is already well versed in the subject
matter.
I know my view of education requirements would exclude me, but here I am
anyway. That must say something about flexibility, or maybe there's a
hole ion the fence. Anway, I would prefer to be educates in the subject
matter. I'm not saying this to employers, hell they rarely got it right
even before adding new requirements. It only reflects what I've seen and
learned about the value of benefits derived when writer and subject mesh
welll. People routinely master things they didn't study in school, so I
intentionally included slight variation from the dogmatic "Engineering
Degree" requirement, so I, you , and all the bazillion ready wri9ters
can join the workforce too, and prove their mettle or be ground under
the wheels.
I agree with you that good writning can work wonders for readabilty and
knowledge transfer. I'm thinking of a special class of good writing,
though, not all good writing.
Good writing does very little, and even gets in the way when I, or
anyone, gets in too deep. I have had my share opf projects that I can
grok in the fullness of time, but someone who came well prepared would
experience nary a ripple of distorion or ambiguity about the project,
The crappy writing around the information that is not well digested is
really what I think separates the engineering-trained writer from the
rest. They dn't do it nearl;y as much, IMHO, and the documentation
benefits immensely.
I'm sure you know what I'm talking about (you are a good writer!) but I
think we're bound to disagree about the requirement, because I've come
to the conclusion that understanding the material on an intellectual
level is paramount, and I know what happens when writers don't. It can
be a big black eye on technical writing. I think our reputation is
pretty well shot because of it.
Thanks for the follow-up. Happy to discuss this, there's obviously a lot
more to it than I can capture.
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