FW: Senior TW vs. TW vs Artfully Senior

["Dimock, Dick" <red -at- ELSEGUNDOCA -dot- ATTGIS -dot- COM>]

Karen Mayer wrote:
>  My question to the group: in your company, how many years of experience
>  are required before a writer can qualify for the "senior" title. Do you
>  have titles above senior? If so, how much experience do they require?

Stuart gibed:
>It's 'Artfully Senior', but I don't know how many years experience you need
>as a senior writer before you qualify. Dick?


Ol' Artfully Senior responds:

It aint the age, it's the mileage.

(Which actually is an applicable response to the original
question. How did *that* slip in here?)

One gets to be Artfully Senior by learning and applying
the Laws of Survival* in this biz. After one has survived one
Layoff, one is an Apprentice Artfully Senior. It goes up in
grade through Junior, then full Artfully Senior, with each
following survival of a Layoff.

I have not investigated whether we need Certification
on these titles, nor whether we should establish additional
lofty levels.  This relates to the Laws of Survival*.

I actually would rate a title of Masterfully Artfully Senior,
going by layoffs survived.  Even typing that  comes close
to violating one the Laws of Survival*.

But there is an additional "quality" to being Artfully Senior,
which is where the esthetics of the art come in.  We of
the Artful ranks also tip our hats to those who have never
been faced with a Layoff, but who manage, following the
Laws of Survival*, to hang in there for decades.  All of the
Independents, for example, who have decades of ebbing
and flowing with the trade, certainly qualify.  But usually
they are too independent to go after mere titles. The
"quality" ones, anyway.

So, in conclusion then, I humbly submit that contiguous
decades (note the plural) have a way of putting on the
mileage and adding the quality - the esthetics, as it were -
of Artful.

Regards to all,

Dick Dimock    Artfully Senior Tech Writer on deadline
          once more, and rather than burn up
          time in Sigging has burned it all up on
          trite content, at

NCR Corp  THE NEW NAME (gasp) of AT&T
          Global Information Solutions. The grand
          dame has returned to her roots in

El Segundo, CA Which is enjoying a warm sunny day
          beside the Blue Pacific.

richard -dot- dimock -at- elsegundoca  *No, I shall not enumerate
               the Laws of Survival at this time.
If ever...