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Subject:RE: Are Tech Writers Valid anymore Re: ghost town From:Beth Kane <bkane -at- ridgetopgroup -dot- com> To:'Gene Kim-Eng' <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 20 Feb 2014 10:18:15 -0700
I'm a fairly technical tech writer, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to write my company's proposals and white papers from scratch because the products are so high-tech, you have to be an electrical engineer or at least a mathematics & computer science specialist to understand or explain them. This is a semiconductor nanotechnology company, with radiation hardening and prognostics among the features. So with the exception of the occasional user guide, which I do write from scratch (and I enjoy that more than anything else), everything I do is actually just editing. They need my English and logic skills. I'm certain they would rather have an EE as a tech writer, but having both those skills is quite a rarity.
Still, I don't feel very secure in my job because if they run too low on money, I'm sure they'll be forced to settle for the engineers writing everything, sans editors. They have already cut my hours from 40 to 32 a week because money is so tight right now. (I must say I am loving these three-day weekends.)
Beth Kane
-----Original Message-----
One type of tech writer we saw a lot of in the 90s has already gone "invalid." Remember all those "non-technical tech writers" who used to opine that not having product knowledge was a strength?
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