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RE: Anyone Can Write - Just Look At The Job Descriptions
Subject:RE: Anyone Can Write - Just Look At The Job Descriptions From:Lynne Wright <Lynne -dot- Wright -at- tiburoninc -dot- com> To:"techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 27 Jun 2011 16:08:22 +0000
<<IMO, that argument just makes writers sound pompous at best and desperate at worst and should be avoided>>
Absolutely. Acting superior/sarcastically denigrating other people doesn't achieve anything other than turning people off.
What will get you hired...and keep you employed... is illustrating how your skills will lighten other's loads and improve the bottom line; whether its through an increase in customer satisfaction, easing the strain on tech support, or freeing up development to focus on programming, rather than writing and reviewing.
When I discovered that product overviews pulled together by sales were poorly written and full of mistakes, I didn't wag my finger at them and call them hacks.... after all, they were just doing their best. Instead, I said that I'd noticed some errors and out of date information; and that I'd be happy to rework their docs to correct inaccuracies that had slipped through the cracks, and make the content flow better and look better. They were delighted, gave me free reign to do whatever I wanted, then sung my praises all around.
Its counterproductive to act as if we, as tech writers, are gods of the written word, because 1) given that most of us don't have tech editors to check our work, chances are that even the best of us can't absolutely guarantee that there are no mistakes or less-than-great writing slipping through in our work; 2) Few people (and this includes a lot of tech writers I've worked with/assessed as job candidates) can tell the difference between really good tech writing and rambling, wordy nonsense; which is why most people aren't moved by claims that we can write better than any other educated person 3) nobody likes a braggart.
Set your own standards high and work hard to achieve them, and be decent to the people you work with -- that's how to win people's respect and appreciation.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+lynne -dot- wright=tiburoninc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lynne -dot- wright=tiburoninc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Gene Kim-Eng
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 11:19 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Anyone Can Write - Just Look At The Job Descriptions
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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