I've had various experiences. When I was contracting I always left at
the end of a project, so I had plenty of work. However, in permanent
positions my workload has largely depended on how much leeway I had to
create my own projects. In two positions where I was a copyeditor in a
strict corporate hierarchy, I had a very feast-or-famine workload, with
little ability to initiate projects on my own. In a recent part-time
tech writer job I had more options to work on my own, but it was
difficult, because of both the physical layout (I was in an office in a
different part of the building from the development group) and the
culture of the developer teams to integrate myself fully into the
department - so I left. In my current permanent job I'm a department of
one, and was hired with the explicit authority to be "entrepreneurial."
This means I've come up with three projects that should take a good year
to complete, along with other day-to-day stuff, so I expect to stay very
busy.
In general, if I'm in a position where I'm bored, don't have interesting
and challenging work to do, and don't see an opportunity to expand my
responsibilities, I leave. But that's just me.
Phil
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+pgochenour=loansoft -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+pgochenour=loansoft -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Melissa Nelson
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 11:02 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Work load question
Hello All,
Happy Friday! I had a Friday poll question of sorts! I am in a light
load
time at work and catching up on some internal documentation that I have
not
had time to do, which is nice but then my finance lady came up and asked
why
I have not done any billable documentation...easy answer...none to do!
:)
Anyway, I got to thinking that it has always been like that since I have
been a tech writer. I am either overloaded with documentation or I am
making
up things to do. I was wondering if that is typical for a tech
writer...do
you all find that you all seem to have a feast or famine kind of
environment
when it comes to documentation?
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