RE: A dark take on Tech Writing...do you agree?

["Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com>]

Well, yes, caring whether you're doing a job right can reasonably be assumed to be a requirement of any job, whether or not it's a career. However, I think maybe the reason I didn't care more about doing the job right was because I didn't see it as a career.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com] 
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 3:33 PM
To: Downing, David; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: A dark take on Tech Writing...do you agree?

This sounds more to me like doing a current job well,
not dedication to a career.  If I hire someone I expect
them to care whether they do the job right whether they
see it as a step in a longterm career path or just a temp
job they've taken in between.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com>


I don't think it's about working to the point of collapse. Rather, it's 
about the level of commitment you have.

As I think I said before, I worked as a professional catalog librarian 
for awhile and got canned. I think the big beef the powers that be had 
against me was that I treated it more like a job than a career -- or a 
"profession." Here's one specific instance of what was wring with my 
attitude. I tended to make a lot of clerical errors that required that 
books came back to be to be redone. I should have been more upset about 
that and actively not wanted it to happen, but it never bothered me as 
much as it should have because I knew I had to work 8 hours a day in any 
case, so what did it matter if I was working on new books or redoing 
books that I'd messed up on the first go-round. I remember thinking that 
if they told me I could only work on new books during the day and had to 
stay extra hours to redo books, that would have made me be moiré 
careful. But I should have been more careful because I cared whether the 
work got done right. So that's why I'm not a catalog librarian anymore.


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