Re: Not Wanted--Technical Writers

[Chris Hamilton <chamilton -at- GR -dot- COM>]

Three points:

1. These poets and polisci majors are, in fact, becoming technical
writers by the action of writing technical material. A technical writer
is someone who can write and explain things that are technical. This is
almost the (wince) certification argument in reverse: not experienced or
certified is better. The stance is the opposite, but its limitations are
the same.

2. The article seems to be dealing writing that isn't on the technical
side. To do the job with the product I'm working on, you either have to
be "entrenched in the subject matter" or you don't understand it.

I challenge anyone without substantial technical experience to document
our product (a multi-tiered distributed application server) without
going way past deadline or irritating the hell out of the developers
trying to meet _their_ deadlines.

3. The information overload problem described is as much a management
problem as a technical writer problem. Or, in other words, I would've
made it shorter if I had the time.
--
Chris Hamilton, Senior Technical Writer
Greenbrier & Russel
847.330.4146
http://www.gr.com
chamilton -at- gr -dot- com
-------------------------
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