Moved to Marketing, summary/thanks

[Beth Kane <Kane -at- VENTANA -dot- COM>]

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful replies. I liked all of them, even
the two-word one ("Get Out").

Andrew had an interesting perspective -- doesn't matter what dept. you're
in. Ignore the company structure and do your job the way you want to.

I heard from a lot of people, mostly off-line, who said it's very important
to be part of the engineering dept. One person said the same thing happened
to her, and she was able to persuade the boss(es) to put her back under
engineering.

One person said I could tell my bosses that "none of the major Silicon
Valley companies have their technical publications departments reporting to
marketing, they all report to engineering. (And that includes all the
clients I've worked for; Cisco, Novell, 3Com, Nortel, Tandem, Xerox, Texas
Instruments, etc.)"

Several had ideas for coping, such as getting yourself invited to all
engineering meetings anyway.

Some said they like doing both types of writing, but I don't think that's
the same issue as being forced into the marketing dept.

And someone said I might be insulting TWs who started as mar/com writers by
using the word "fluff." Funny -- I started as a reporter and then a PR
writer before lucking into tech writing. I acknowledge there's a need for
marketing writing, I just don't like doing it, partly because it's too easy.


There are other issues and implications of this move, but it's making me
tired thinking about it -- and I've got work to do this morning!
Thanks again,

Beth Kane
kane -at- ventana -dot- com

Visit our Arizona forests at
http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/

"That married couples can live together day after day
is a miracle that the Vatican has overlooked."
~ Bill Cosby


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