Re: doing a good job...

[Nancy Hickman <nhickman -at- GVI -dot- NET>]

Sorry man,
I have to break in here. I'm silly about a lot of things, but I don't
agree that stress is what makes being a technical writer fun, not even
in jest, not even in some sort of black humor. Although I realize you're
kidding, I have to say to others that given the choice of things I'd
like to brag about in my life, it wouldn't be saying proudly what a
stressed-out job I had and how understaffed the place was where I
worked. I don't think anyone would be impressed about those sorts of
bragging rights. I'm sober about this issue.

Perm growth in departments more often occur when budgets come around or
when the arbitrary headcount-increase time occurs at a company. It
doesn't often occur in the heavy workload time; during that time more
often people grin and bear it and get through. Sometimes contractors are
sought. When your company comes around to sizing a job (how many
programmers are we going to need, etc.) or gets around to budgeting
headcount for the next accounting cycle, I think it's a good idea for
people in tech pubs to try to size themselves for doing terrific work.
And also size themselves for creating a great place to work, where
people are not stressed to the max and where people can happily envision
working there for longer than a few months.

-- Nancy Hickman