How times have changed?

[Tim Altom <taltom -at- SIMPLYWRITTEN -dot- COM>]

This is a subject that haunts me. We currently have a company in town that
supplies dozens of supposed "tech writers" in projects that are actually
clerical; they really ARE typing up engineers' notes. We have many "tech
writers" hereabouts who know how to type in Microsoft Word, but can't even
form grammatical sentences. Yet they find work, year after year.

Whenever I hear tech comm'ers bemoaning the low esteem in which we're often
held, I have to wince. We as a profession have done nothing to change that.
Oh, we've worked a little out here and there, the "light a single candle"
approach. But we've done nothing in concert to make ourselves look like
professionals to other professionals. We've shrunk back from defining core
competencies, for example. Talk of certification sends many of us into
apoplexy. We talk about solving this problem with degree programs, yet the
vast majority of us continue to enter from outside of those boundaries.
Electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, millwrights, and other skilled
tradesmen serve recognized apprenticeships, while doctors, lawyers,
engineers, and accountants must serve a specific number of years in
academics to even qualify for testing into their professions. (Except for
Arizona, where you don't need a law degree to be a lawyer.)

We, in the middle, have no credentials to mark us out, except for the
beloved HR requirements of "English or equivalent degree, experience in
PageMaker or other desktop publishing tool..." Many of us pretend to a
rugged individualism that precludes anything as socialistic as a recognition
system, but the majority of us actually work within corporations, which are
constantly searching for better and faster ways to screen for superior
employees.

Until some organization acts to establish a formal recognition of skills,
and then popularizes that recognition, we'll always have horror stories of
lousy documentation and brain-dead management of technical communicators.
STC is the logical vehicle for such a program, but the issue has been so
explosive within STC that proponents step lightly and even the best
proposals for it are cautious and tentative.

Worse, we overlook the fact that the public at large believes that we've all
been lobotomized before we're given a keyboard. Columnist Dave Berry
advanced that a recent study revealed that fully 14% of Americans do not
have English as a first language, and the majority of those write computer
manuals.

Our profession is possessed of research results and tools undreamt of just a
few years ago. We now have what we need to provide even newbies with enough
professionalism to awe the rest of the technology community. Yet we don't. I
have to think that the ultimate source of all those low opinions of us
aren't the fault of others, but of ourselves.


Tim Altom
Adobe Certified Expert, Acrobat
Simply Written, Inc.
The FrameMaker support people
Ask about Clustar Method training and consulting
317.899.5882
http://www.simplywritten.com

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