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First, Marguerite was not talking about the skill set or the task or the work product. She was only talking about where in the organization chart the technical writers fit--who they report into and whose budget they are on. I have performed the same job function and produced the same general type of deliverables for a lot of years, but at various times I have reported in to managers responsible for product management (part of marketing), customer support (its own organization), and operations (manufacturing) as well as being part of engineering supprt, development, customer engineering, and system engineering departments. Same job, same skill set, same deliverables, different boss and budget. No big differences, except in relation to how effectively my manager was able to apply pressure when SMEs were being uncooperative.
Second, any company whose marketing department routinely deals in fiction rather than fact will not survive for very long, particularly if they do business in Asia.
-Fred Ridder
> Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:04:27 -0700
> Subject: Re: Tech Pubs vs MarCom
> From: robert -at- lauriston -dot- com
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
> To me the skill sets seem incompatible. Fact vs. fiction.
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 9:38 AM, Marguerite Krupp <mkrupp128 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> > Really, tech writers and editors often wind up in Marketing just by the roll of the organizational dice. It's no big deal, as long as the check clears.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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