Re: The ladder principle

Subject: Re: The ladder principle
From: dan -dot- charles -at- tyson -dot- com
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 14:02:11 -0700


Roger,
Three technical writers from bmc software presented "A Non-Management
Career Path for Technical Writers" at the STC Region 5 Conference in 2002.

The focus was on what you call the ladder principle. Most of the material
covered building a technical career path pretty much described in Dick
Margulis' earlier post. What BMC used was specialization in areas like
subject matter knowledge, tool expertise, and process improvements.
Employees demonstrated expertise several different ways.

They became "go to" people in business areas (i.e. Offer knowledge on
corporate marketing strategy, or a particular product), tools (Answer just
about any question about Adobe Acrobat, MS Access, etc.), or process
developers (Whip out Excel or Word templates for any situation). They also
became mentors to other technical communicators wanting to learn these
skills. Their ability to fully transfer that knowledge to others was a
weighting factor.

I think they came up with only three or so job titles, and their
advancement was marked by the list of specialties that went with their
title. Get enough specialties and you advanced a job title. An example of
a job title might be Technical Writer. An advancing technical writer might
have a job title of Technical Writer-Manufacturing, or Technical
Writer-Adobe Photoshop, or Technical Writer-Forms Designer.

Thanks,
Dan charles
dan -dot- charles -at- tyson -dot- com

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