RE: Still Seeking Your Thoughts About Technical Skills

Subject: RE: Still Seeking Your Thoughts About Technical Skills
From: "Stitzel, Ken" <kstitzel -at- itc -dot- nrcs -dot- usda -dot- gov>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 10:19:50 -0600


Thought I'd throw my hat, er, list into the ring and announce my candidacy,
er, response to Ted Engel's query.

Preface:
* My cynical experiential theory of tech writing:
- about 1/3 of the job is being able to write/edit/organize
- about 1/3 is people skills (i.e., ability to schmooze
information out of technical folk)
- about 1/3 is tool knowledge.

* Cautionary tale: Most employers only care about tool knowledge
and assume you have all the rest if they think about it at all.

* Additional theory 1:
What makes you seem cutting edge to an employer varies wildly
and is not necessarily what makes you cutting edge in the
tech writing community. Obvious example: InDesign/Photoshop/
FreeHand/Illustrator may seem very sexy to do cool stuff (if
that's your bag under the broad description of tech writing),
but it obviously does you little good for with a company
that doesn't use it.

* Additional theory 1:
You have to be able to learn new (or new-to-you) software
relatively quickly to survive as a tech writer.

* Additional theory 2:
The more you can do what your employer's techies do,
the more cutting edge you will seem to that employer.

That said, my humble list of specifics follows, with a bit of context....

Current job:

* Federal gov't, all Microsoft, creating software for Agri-Feds

* Basic skills: MS Word, FrontPage
(both of which I often find frustrating and irksome)

* Cutting edge: ability to create .NET apps

* Very helpful: PVCS source control system


Last year:

* Energy industry (software & hardware for gizmos to go onto
gigantic pipeline pump engines)

* Basic skills:
PageMaker
FrameMaker
basic graphics package like Paint Shop Pro

* Cutting edge:
ability to manipulate and adapt AutoCAD drawings
for manuals. (Like many hardware firms, this place
relied on AutoCAD drawings by the hundreds.)


Two years ago:

* Enterprise Unix OS software for software installation
and OS patching

* Basic skills:
FrameMaker+SGML
basic Unix commands
VI
emacs
gimp or other graphics packages

* Cutting edge:
XML/XSLT, used to maintain web pages that had to
conform to a Byzantine company-enforced style standard.
Looked VERY promising for implementing a single-sourcing
system consisting almost entirely of free software.

any kind of scripting or programming that would automate
any of your tasks

* Very helpful:
ClearCase source control system

* Cautionary tale 1:
Ignoring 14,000 Unix users, the rest of the company
believed the entire world revolved around MS Office
apps and sometimes required their use)

* Cautionary tale 2:
Ignoring the promise of the XML/XSLT stuff, my group
seemed about to make a very expensive (mis?)investment
in some kind of proprietary single-sourcing system.

All the usual generic cautions apply. YMMV. This message presented on
100-percent recycled electrons. No technical writers were harmed during the
creation of this message, though the author will probably be abused at some
later date. Hope this (somehow) helps.

Ken Stitzel

Rent-a-Fed documentation specialist (for about another two weeks)


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