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>I am amazed at how many of you drifted this discussion off topic as quickly
>as possible.
>...
>The question was: when faced with someone who has misrepresented themselves
>as a technical person, what do you do? How do you handle a person who
>clearly cannot deal with the technology yet are supposed to write about
that
>technology? Do you help them? Fire them? Stick them in an editors
>position? What is the answer to solving the problem of non-technical,
>technical writers?
But this is simply a particular case of a general HR problem: what do I do
when I discover that the person I hired is not capable of doing the job I
hired them for. You can train, transfer, terminate, or tolerate, depending
on your circumstances. The problem is not unique to tech writing, and I
don't see that the tech writing field has any special perspectives to bring
to bear on it.
The only advice I would offer is to seek the guidance of your HR department
to make sure you respect the rights of the person concerned, and , when you
make your decision, consider the *long term* impact on the productivity and
morale of the rest of the group.
---
Mark Baker
Manager, Corporate Communications
OmniMark Technologies Corporation
1400 Blair Place
Gloucester, Ontario
Canada, K1J 9B8
Phone: 613-745-4242
Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- omnimark -dot- com
Web: http://www.omnimark.com
