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Subject:RE: Where did you get your feet wet? From:"Barbara Green" <Barbara -dot- Green -at- neonesoft -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 6 Jun 2005 09:19:33 -0500
My background is journalism. I was working for a trade magazine company that specialized in covering non-IBM computers. They had monthlies for Burroughs, Sperry (dating myself a bit, huh), Convergent Technologies (what, you don't remember them?), TI, etc.
It was not a happy place. But it did get me over the trauma I had in college when I tried to take a programming class, and it did get me thinking about taking my new found knowledge to California, where I thought there must be a lot of opportunities to do the same kind of work a lot closer to the ocean.
But I was not experienced enough for the big league computer journals, and I wound up taking temp work. One of the companies hired me permanently and then made the technical writer position for me when they realized I could put a sentence together. It was mainly specifications and data sheets, but it was
enough to get me hired by a job shop that had a contract with IBM Santa Teresa Labs.
Mainframe databases have been my bread and butter ever since, although I worked for a lot of different companies in the Bay Area.
I was about 5 years into my tech writing career before I met anyone who actually set out to be a tech writer. My ignorance, I'm sure, but it did surprise me at the time.
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