Re: Reality Check Time

[Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>]

Kate O'Neill wrote:

> I'm skilled in online help development, and I've never been classified as a
> developer.
> However, even before my career moved into management, I was making the upper
> end
> of the range discussed.

I suspect salary range depends in part on how much technical wizardry you're
supposed to display as you produce Help files and other kinds of output that
isn't strictly documentation.  For instance, if you're also in charge of
ever-changing web pages on an intranet, and you need to create and use Perl and
cgi scripts, etc., I can see a company finding it easy to justify paying you
more than it might pay a garden-variety technical writer.  The original query,
however, was about a person who wanted to just do writing, and not particularly
technical writing at that.  IMHO, we call those folks "marketing writers."  They
generally don't have long job tenure although they can experience short bursts
of high pay.

> On the other other hand, I'm in the Bay area, where someone claimed that a cup
> of coffee costs $12.

Oh, please! I'm getting really tired of this board providing fuel for urban
legends that aren't true.  I can't think of a single place in the Bay Area where
you have to pay $12 for a cup of coffee.  We've dissed Silicon Valley - and the
people who work here - enough, thankyouverymuch.  People choose geographic areas
for a variety of reasons - what's wrong with simply acknowledging that diff'rent
folks like diff'rent strokes and let it go at that?

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

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