Re: Post about a creative writer who went into tech writing for a spell

[John G <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

I didn't realize you were THAT old, Gene!

I got my degree in English and Philosophy, managed to avoid getting sent to
'Nam despite a draft number of 32 and then had to figure out how to make a
living,. Answered a couple of ads and picked the one that didn't involve
radioactive isotopes but did involve software. A few months in one of the
writers quit and the doc manager said "Hey kid, you've got an English
degree, how'd you like to be a tech writer?" Like Lin, I, too, was born to
be one. Pretty much have been one ever since.  I get to be Arthur
Conan-Doyle for a living - half the time I'm Sherlock Holmes turning over
rocks looking for clues, and half the time as Dr. Watson writing it down
for the edification of others.

My 2Â,

JG



On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 4:24 PM, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:

> I had a head start on knowing about it, my father being an engineer.  But
> when I looked into the field, I was told by some on-campus industry
> recruiters that they liked their writers to be people with technical
> backgrounds who had spent some time working in tech fields before becoming
> writers (this was back in the late 60's).  So I got my BSME and went to
> work as an engineer.
>
> I was a fairly decent engineer, got reasonable raises and advancement, but
> 15 years later was still an engineer - and was doing most of the
> documentation in the R&D groups I was working in.  So when the aerospace
> boom ended, I finally got round to becoming a writer in the semiconductor
> industry, and within a year I was a tech pubs manager. Probably shouldn't
> have waited that long to make the transition.
>
> Gene Kim-Eng
>
>
>
> On 10/23/2015 12:34 PM, Lin Sims wrote:
>
>> I didn't even know there was such a thing as tech writing until my final
>> year in college.
>>
>
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