Re: engineers

Subject: Re: engineers
From: Elna Tymes <etymes -at- LTS -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:28:53 -0700

Canadian wrote:

> I am wondering if anyone can tell me the current state of the relationship
> between writers and the esteemed wizards, engineers, in industry. I ask because
> I work with a smart young woman, graduating soon with a degree in Computer
> Engineering. Yesterday she ranted on Tech Writers as "useless, overpaid, and
> not altogether capable" of understanding what she and her peers do.

<sigh> So young, so sure. So naive!

What your young friend ranted about is a typical prejudice, encountered largely
when in the company of someone who has never worked with a garden-variety capable
technical writer, and assumes (with the innocence of the uninitiated) that all
programmers and engineers write intelligible prose.

<guffaw!!!!!>

The best answer I can give you is that she'll get a wake-up call before long, big
time! And you can watch her attempt to get the egg off her face.

I suppose it's so common among the young, fresh-faced CompSci (or equivalent)
graduates because they've been writing papers for their classes and assume that
just anyone can explain things. Remember that very few of these young 'uns have
ever met a real User -in the sense that the business community uses the term - and
fewer still have tried to explain a procedure to them. Further, many of these
innocenti blithely assume that the world is interested in the intricacies of why a
particular program does what it does, but forget that it's ordinary people who have
to make the program do something functional and cost-effective.

Finally, remember one of Elna's Maxims: Arrogance does not go unpunished in the
90's.

Elna Tymes
Los Trancos Systems

From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=




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