Re: Senior Tech Writers Needed in San Ramon, CA.

[Donald Le Vie <dlevie -at- VLINE -dot- NET>]

Brad:

As you've probably read on this list serv, there are many perspectives and
opinions floating around. With all due respect, while you may scoff and call
clueless employers who require English degrees of their technical writer
candidates, think of how absurd some may find that you were hired as a TW
with a degree in business administration and a minor in German....


Donn Le Vie
Director, Information Development
Integrated Concepts


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brad [SMTP:kiwi -at- BEST -dot- COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 1999 10:39 AM
> To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject:      Re: Senior Tech Writers Needed in San Ramon, CA.
>
> What on earth do they think a degree in Journalism has to do with
> qualifying
> anyone to be a technical writer?
>
> Regarding an English major, someone with a PhD in English wrote my
> employer's version 1.0 documentation. My employer is a startup; they knew
> they needed a writer; they naively assumed that certainly a PhD would know
> what he/she was doing. WRONG! The *absolute* worst technical writing
> drivel
> I have ever seen was written by that person. Although his two documents--a
> User Guide and an Administrator Guide--did have complete sentences with
> complete with punctuation, the content and organization was worst than
> anything that I've seen engineers or technical support staff shovel
> together
> and call it technical documentation. Perhaps the PhD thought he was
> writing
> a research paper or a novel. His two documents had absolutely no task
> orientation--no procedures at all. Imagine a User Guide that doesn't tell
> your customer how to do things! <gasp!>
>
> After he left the company, I came in an performed a major rewrite of one
> of
> his documents. Believe me, it's like comparing day and night.
>
> By the way, I'm a Business Administration major with a minor in German. I
> recently won an award in the STC competition. Actually, it's my study of
> German that has greatly helped my understanding of the nuts and bolts of
> English more so than any set of English courses that I had taken in
> college.
>
> We are a diverse group of professionals. Anyone who *insists* that a
> candidate *must* have an English or Journalism degree is a red flag that
> they are clueless. I would look elsewhere for a job, and it's to their own
> disadvantage that they are missing or disqualifying some good talent.
>
> Brad
>
> >
> > Tony,
> >
> > Can you believe this guy? I post and ad and this guy wants to know why I
> > want someone with an English degree. . . .  I guess he has a lot of free
> > time.
> >
> > Just curious. . . is this something that is a hot debate topic on this
> > list?
> >
> > -Terri
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
>
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> =
>
>

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