Re: What's the most technical task you ever did as part of your job?

["William Sherman" <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>]

I used to never think that my work was that highly technical, as it was just 
something all my coworkers and I did as part of the job. But compared to 
some things I've done recently, I guess it was pretty good stuff for the 
time.

F15 Avionics and Electronic Warfare stuff. Don't ask, I won't tell. Writers 
were Data Engineers, and were expected to write that stuff with minimum 
interaction with the design engineers, working strictly from drawings, 
prints, schematics, and on the bird access. Back then, there were hundreds 
of us. Today, they do it with a dozen or so.

Motorola cellular systems, not just the phone, but the entire system of 
software and the cellular units that make those little phones work. This was 
back when most phones were the size of a brick or larger and maybe you knew 
someone who had a cellular phone.

Helicopter stuff. Igor Sikorsky was obviously the first person to heavily 
use drugs, based on how he ever figured out how to make one fly.  Everything 
after that had to be equally as insane.  Rube Goldberg was a lightweight.

One of those San Jose network companies with switches, routers, and such. 
Again, it seemed normal at the time to configure and run them, but 
apparently, they still consider that stuff high tech.

Big Blue got into robots and it was one fun project. In a land of dark blue 
suits, white shirts, and ties, we would have some days in tee shirts and 
jeans as we tore the robots apart in the lab.


The really sad part is that in most jobs, there would be dozens or more 
technical writers doing a job, all of them highly technical. Now there seems 
to be 3 or 4 at most and often the writer is barely above a secretary in 
writing skill.  Of course, many want to pay at that same low level. I worked 
with a guy not long ago complaining about rates in Orlando. His explanation 
was the low rates and poor quality were due to actions of one STC member 
years ago to convert housewives into technical writers with a tech writing 
degree in the local college. They knew all about writing, Word, and such, 
but had zero technical background, and would work for secretary wages as the 
STC person/instructor told them that was the going pay.

Hope I'm not offending anyone on here who lives or lived in Orlando.




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Lauriston" <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 2:26 PM
Subject: What's the most technical task you ever did as part of your job?