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Re: "Technical Writers are Vital for Technology Startups"
Subject:Re: "Technical Writers are Vital for Technology Startups" From:Shari Punyon <sharipunyon -at- gmail -dot- com> To:Lin Sims <ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com> Date:Wed, 3 Jul 2019 18:05:46 -0400
Wow! This one technical writer - a cheap contractor with as little as a three month contract - is going to replace three-four full time marketing and communications staff, your audit and legal departments, and an experienced disaster recovery architect !
I have certainly dabbled in a lot of different areas during my career, and I strongly believe in the value of good technical writing, but this person is smoking something.
> On Jul 3, 2019, at 4:47 PM, Lin Sims <ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> I have to disagree with the following definition:
>
> "Technical writers are one of two types of professionals. A) An Enterprise,
> Full Stack Developer, or Systems Analyst that transitioned into a technical
> writer. B) A journalism or communications professional that decided to
> pursue a writing career in technology."
>
> I am neither. My degree was in English with a writing concentration, and I
> graduated intending to work as a technical writer, but the first job I had
> that wasn't as supplemental personnel (read: office staff or production
> word processing) was as a "quality control specialist", which meant I
> compared an original document with the output of a production word
> processor and made sure they matched. The job after that, however, was as a
> technical writer who produced research papers on the telco industry, and
> since then I've documented SOPs, software, circuit design, and now the
> hardware and software used to track assets and people in medical
> facilities.
>
> Not only that, but I am *not *a member of the "gig economy". My preference,
> and most of my employment, has been as a direct employee, not as a
> contractor.
>
> (Aside: what is being said in this sentence? "Also, it will cost double the
> expense of one full-time writer on site than it is to hire a contractor." I
> can't figure out if the writer is saying that full-time employees cost
> twice as much as a contractor or vice-versa. I'm assuming the former, but
> that sentence is quite clunky. And that's the technical term! Nor is it the
> only sentence in the article that is difficult to parse.)
>
> The writer lists quite a few benefits to employing a technical writer that
> I do agree with, but there are a lot of underlying assumptions that I find
> to be erroneous.
>
>> On Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 2:49 PM Cardimon, Craig <ccardimon -at- m-s-g -dot- com> wrote:
>>
>> I found this article interesting. I hope you will, too.
>>
>>
>> https://readwrite.com/2019/06/21/technical-writers-are-vital-for-technology-startups/
>>
>>
>> Cordially,
>> Craig Cardimon | Senior Technical Writer
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Lin Sims
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