FWD: Re: Sterling Software

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

Name withheld upon request. Please reply on list.

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In the acquisition that we recently underwent, we gradually cut about
150 permanent jobs over the course of 2 weeks, but the writers here made
it through all of the rounds unscathed.  We lost folks from the lowest
level on the totem pole all the way up through engineers, managers, and
people who had been here since the company was virtually born, but had
no direct reports.  It was a very tenuous time. The company has not
traditionally held the writers in high esteem because the manager we
used to report to didn't have any background in writing or
documentation, so I figured that we would be among the first to go.  Our
new manager said that cutting the writing staff wasn't even an option
because we were the only ones who really knew the "nuts and bolts" (his
words) of what our company did from the fundamental policy and procedure
levels on up through our production processes, and they felt that any
disruption to the department would only wreak further havoc with an
already stressful situation.

Hope this helps alleviate some of your stress.  Situations like this are
the worst, especially when you see what's looming on the horizon and
have virtually no control over the outcome.  Hopefully your management
will take the same view of the documentation folks as ours did.