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Subject:Re: TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY From:Keith Soltys <ksoltys -at- DJTTD -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 28 Jan 1998 17:43:12 GMT
On Tue, 27 Jan 1998 14:57:30 -0600, you wrote:
>This question leads me to another....how many of you, when interviewing,
>ask to see (if not offered a tour) the work facilities in which you
>would be doing your technical writing? I heard a horror story about a
>tech writer who quit a not-too-bad job for one he thought was better (a
>start-up company with decent looking corporate offices, developing
>hardware that used cutting-edge technology, etc.). It turned out that
>the company hiring him didn't have a clue about what a tech writer needs
>or does specifically. He was put in a windowless room with a 386, amber
>monitor, and a DOS-based word processor. The guys upstairs (developers)
>had the best equipment but they didn't think the writer needed it
>because "all he did was write"! He lasted two weeks (just long enough to
>line up something else). What a nightmare. It gave me chills hearing it.
Sounds familiar. A few jobs back, I was interviewed at a company where
everyone appeared to be working on UNIX workstations with nice big monitors
and Interleaf. I got the job and was taken to my desk, sitting on which was
an ancient IBM 3279 terminal. Turned out that the project that I'd been
assigned to used IBM BookMaster and XEDIT. At least the BookMaster
experienced helped me to pick up HTML when that came along.
Best
Keith
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Keith Soltys -- ksoltys -at- djttd -dot- com -- http://www.interlog.com/~ksoltys/
Senior Technical Writer, Technical Development, Dow Jones Markets Inc.
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Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you;
if you don't bet, you can't win. --Robert A. Heinlein
