Re: A Quandry about Titles...

[Pam Tatge <pamt -at- STEINBECK -dot- SC -dot- TI -dot- COM>]

For most of my 10 1/2 years at Texas Instruments, I called myself
a technical writer, as do most of the other writers in my
department. Technical communicator has seemed, to us, to be a
broader term that includes jobs that we don't have the opportunity
to do. Internally, we do have different job codes that indicate
a combination of seniority and accomplishment, as judged by our
management. (We also have illustrators and "typesetters" who
support the writers by providing illustrating and formatting
services, when we need them.)

Calling *everyone* a technical writer causes some problems for
us:

o Within our department, there are some drastic differences in the
  abilities and skills of various writers. We have people who get
  only a listing of commands and the product diskette as engineering
  source, and write technically accurate, usable manuals. We have
  other people who do little more than take dictation. But, all of
  these people have the same title. Some of the writers find this
  very annoying.

o Signs of advancement seem to be very important to some of the
  people that we've hired over the past several years. At times,
  it seems as if the only visible advancement is to become a
  manager, and there just isn't room for everyone to become a
  manager. We've actually had people leave because they didn't
  see a clear career path, including changes in title, mapped
  out for them.

o Other departments that we work with use more specific titles
  (for example, not just engineer, but design engineer or application
  engineer). Because we do have such a difference in skills, it
  might be appropriate to use job titles that give a better indication
  of the job that will be done by a specific person.

So, we have discussed using terms such as those that Janie Torpie
suggested (associate writer, senior writer, etc.). We've also discussed
using a title like information developer. We haven't made much progress.
And, although there's more to the situation than choosing and assigning
new job titles, the titles themselves are important to a lot of
the people involved.

The reason that I call myself a member of group technical staff
is because this is a position that I was elected to by the technical
community within TI. My management couldn't promote me into this position,
nor could they necessarily prevent me from being elected. It sounds
like at Joe Chew's former company, the technical ladder was treated
like a joke. Here, it's serious and useful. And, I think it's important
to have technical writers on technical staff, not only here but at other
companies, too. I think it helps all of us to gain some of the
recognition and respect that we deserve. Unfortunately, just as not
everyone can become manager of the department, not everyone can be
elected to technical staff; therefore, it's not the answer to my
department's problems with titles.

If anyone's interested in technical staff and our technical ladder,
I'll be giving a presentation about it at the STC conference in May.

Regards--
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Pam Tatge, Member Group Technical Staff
Texas Instruments Semiconductor Group, Houston
pamt -at- steinbeck -dot- sc -dot- ti -dot- com
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