Re: Anyone Can Write - Just Look At The Job Descriptions

[Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

And to a certain extent, these perceptions about technical writers, QEs and
many other functions can be correct.  If your workload is small enough
and/or your standards for the work are low enough, you often can load
functions like these onto other people with results that are "good enough"
to get by, at least for a while.  There are any number of successful
companies that went without a lot of staff for quite a long time before they
had the luxury to hire or the inescapable need to do it. That's why in
interviews I always try to find a way to ask why the position I'm being
considered for is open before they get a chance to ask me why I think they
need it, and why when making proposals for documentation support concentrate
on technical writers' ability to remove distracting documentation workload
from development or other functions and get the work done faster and with
better results and never try to convince people that they need writers
because nobody else can do the job.  IMO, that argument just makes writers
sound pompous at best and desperate at worst and should be avoided.

Gene Kim-Eng


On Mon, Jun 27, 2011 at 2:26 AM, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>wrote:

> Quality engineers (my wife's one) whine--er--I mean observe--that some
> managers think anyone can be a QE. After all, what kind of talent does it
> take to use an "OK" rubber stamp? Or to write specs that say a 50-lb bag
> will have between 50.0 and 50.5 lbs of material in it? They do not want to
> hear any statistical theory (or other mathematics) that does not match their
> preconceived notions. And they want that bad batch of stuff retested until
> it's good.
>
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