Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing"

[Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>]

He who? Looking back in the thread it's not clear who you're talking
about there.

I was the manager of the ex-programmer. He made his deadlines, so it
wasn't clear until he was gone how much time he spent making
unusable-by-anyone-else kludges.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 8:22 PM, William Sherman
<bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com> wrote:
> What he was describing was hiring the English major who knows nothing
> technical, as opposed to hiring the person who may have had the AS degree in
> technology, or had worked their way up through the company from grunt, to
> assembler, to technician, to finally writer. Yes, most companies don't allow
> that transition anymore, but some still do that by jumping companies.
>
> It would be silly to hire a developer that all you used them for was to
> write software technical manuals, but hiring the person who programmed their
> own home projects or dabbled in personal programming projects would be a
> much better choice that a person who has no grasp of a programming language.
>
> He is looking for a clean slate who will not question any code produced by
> the programmers, will never question their explanation of what is happening,
> thus never discovering their mistakes, and will come to work dirt cheap. He
> is looking for a secretary who will take dictation from the developers and
> then clean up the format.
>
> Typically, the person with the higher skills level (programmer vs.
> technical, engineer vs. technician, etc.)  would be foolish monetarily to
> work a job below their skill set, although many choose to do so because of
> enjoyment, lack of stress, sense of accomplishments, and other personal
> reasons. Sometimes they do it for the simplest of reasons - they need a job
> to pay the bills. If all the high skills jobs are full, or are laying off,
> and the lower ones are available, then you decide quickly if eating and
> paying the mortgage is more important than the title of your job.
>
> Even so, making a decision to hire someone from a pool of people with 50% of
> the qualifications instead of someone from the pool with 85% of the
> qualifications is silly, unless you a.) want a clean slate you can train in
> your method and want to previous baggage or b.) you are after someone you
> can hire cheap.
>
>
> Your guy below sounds like a management issue, in that the manager didn't
> keep tabs on things and let him get off course too much.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Lauriston" <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
> To: "TECHWR-L Writing" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 10:37 PM
> Subject: Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing"
>
>
>> In the software industry, at least, a developer who can write can make
>> a lot more money writing software.
>>
>> I've worked with two developers who switched to writing because they
>> preferred it. One of them had a tendency to turn everything into a
>> development project, which made him not very productive.
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 7:11 PM, William Sherman
>> <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>
>>> If you were looking for technical writers, why choose between
>>> non-technical
>>> people who can write  and technical people who can't? Wouldn't hiring
>>> technical people who can write be the desirable choice?
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