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> Now, I remain employed because, despite the changing list of tools, I
make
> it a point to be reasonably expert(?) in PageMaker, Frame, RoboHelp,
> PowerPoint, Word (ugh), and all the others that the jobs reuire.
Tool knowledge is extremely important. I'm one of the people who argue in
favor of task knowledge. But I realize I have not been clear.
I see two kinds of knowledge. One is permanent. Some of skills that made
Homer a great poet serve tech writers three thousand years later. The other
is temporary. Two weeks after I completed a training course on Visual Basic
5, my company issued me a copy of Visual Basic 6.
Tool VS task doesn't exactly define the difference, and there is a lot of
gray area.
In general, schools should concentrate on teaching skills that will last.
Temporary knowledge is better learned as needed, on the job or as
independent study.
A university should not concentrate on teaching a student FrameMaker 5.5.
But in order to teach the general ideas of building a document on a
computer, you have to get the students up to speed on some particular tool.
Back when I was a computer science student at the University of Illinois
(the computer lab mentioned by HAL 9000 in the movie '2001') we were
expected to know Fortran or learn it on our own. A short non-credit course
was offered for those who felt they needed it. Harsh policy, and I hated it
at the time, but it makes sense to me now. They weren't willing to waste my
time teaching me a language that would soon be obsolete in many fields.
And in hiring, employers will get better results if they look at skills that
last. If everything works out, the specific tool skills that the candidate
has now will be obsolete for most of time that person is on the job.
Contracting is different.
Both permanent and temporary knowledge are important. I have yet to learn a
temporary skill that didn't come with some permanent knowledge.
---
Office:
mike -dot- huber -at- software -dot- rockwell -dot- com
Home:
nax -at- execpc -dot- com
