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Ignoring the gender twist the thread took, I'll leap in.
Joe, Chris and other use phrases like "technical knowlege" and
"technical background" withought ever defining what they mean. As if
there is some magic skill set which would make a truly "technical"
technical writer. An engineering background? In what - mechanical?
electrical? software? chemical? industrial? Should we know a list of
programming languages? How to read schematics? C code?
The reality is that the jobs available are so varied it would be
impossible to be an SME from one job to next. We are a very technical
company, but if I were hiring now I have no idea what technical skills I
would ask for.
I'm one of those "female arts gradutes", but I took programming,
chemistry, math and physics at school.
At my first job, we made mapping and GIS software. I took a CAD course,
updated my programming skills with C++, learned a bit about database
programming, and learned as much about GIS as I could.
All this helped me get my current job, with a company which makes
hydrographic survey and seabed classification software. Except that the
hydrographic stuff ended up taking less than a quarter of my time.
My boss and I were discussing training recently - what courses should I
look at taking? I thought that some electronics course would help me
with another part of my job - editing design descriptions and functional
descriptions for rail transit applications. I'd also like some
mechanical engineering knowledge to help me write workshop manuals for
our logic boxes. Or maybe a course in quality systems - another big part
of my job is writing and maintaining ISO 9000 documentation, and I'm
also learning to be an auditor. Or maybe project management, another
growing part of my job. I could further update my programming skills -
here we use Neuron C, so I guess I could learn that.
Or I could continue being what they pay me to be - a generalist. If we
were big enough, we could have a specialized writer in charge of each of
these areas. But we aren't, and you know what? I kinda like it that way.
I'm interested in almost everything, and I have a job that lets me
indulge.
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_______________________________
Ginna Dowler - Technical Writer
Quester Tangent Corporation
Sidney, BC
gdowler -at- questercorp -dot- com
