Re: ANON: job dissatisfaction

[Svi Ben-Elya <svi -at- ELIASHIM -dot- CO -dot- IL>]

If you want to take charge and work on more creative projects, try taking
responsibility and make proposals. If you have an idea, prepare a rough
draft or mockup, along with a written proposal of why you think this is
useful, what your assumptions are, and what you feel needs to done. Not all
proposals will be accepted.

I do this all the time and it works well. Some proposals are accepted and
others become the basis for something completely different. More than one
proposal has been way off the mark on some of the specifics, but accepted
with changes.

As a rule, the smaller the company, the easier it is to get involved and
even have responsibility pushed on you. Large companies have more low-level
work where you perform technical tasks and don't see the whole picture.
Unless you have the experience to be (one of) the senior writer(s), large
companies may never push this responsibility on you.

_______________________
- Svi Ben-Elya -
svi -at- il -dot- esafe -dot- com
chase -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il
_______________________



-----Original Message-----
From: Technical Writers List; for all Technical Communication issues
[mailto:TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU]On Behalf Of Anonymous
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 1998 00:28
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: ANON: job dissatisfaction


Message forwarded on request. Please
reply on list.

****************************


I've posted previously about job dissatisfaction in my current job and
previous jobs.  I'm getting really frustrated with myself and with the work
world in general.

After graduating from college I had one job for 4 months and left due to
boredom.  At that time I really didnt know what I wanted to do and just
took a job to pay the bills.  I took a temp job until I could find my ideal
job.

Six weeks later I had what I thought was my ideal job.  I had discovered
tech writing, entered a masters program and thought I had found a job that
would give me experience.  I did almost no technical writing there and left
9 months later for what, again, I thought was my dream job.

 At the next job I got some TW experience and a $5000 raise from my
previous job.  I left that job after I'd had it for 8 months because they
gave me a promotion with lots more responsibility and no raise.  Also
because I had no official job duites for 6 months and management wasnt all
that excited about putting any down on paper.  I also left because a
fortune 500 company offered me a job and a $15000 raise.

Now I'm at the fortune 500 company and I hate my job.  I'm doing lots of
Web work (which is partly what I want to do), but no technical writing.
Also the web work I am doing is not exactly the kind of web work I want to
be doing.  Most of all I hate the organization around here.  I never know
what I'm going to be doing when I get to work because they give me bits and
pieces of work on a daily basis and NEVER give me the big picture.  Because
they don't give me the big picture I often end up redoing things...

I've only been here since August and think I should give this job and this
organization and myself more time before I call it quits, but I get more
and more frustrated every single day.  When I first got here they werent
giving me any work at all and I complained to my manager and now I'm at
least getting work...

I need to hear other people's points of view here.  The people closest to
me think I will never be happy or satisfied with any job, but I dont think
thats true.  I also dont think its true that I always just end up in bad
companies or bad departments.  In other words, I'm willing to accept some
of the responsibility here.  However, every time I've left a job its been
for what I thought would be a better job and I've always received
significant pay raises in the deal...

Help!!!


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