Re: What constitutes a senior tech writer and how to get

Subject: Re: What constitutes a senior tech writer and how to get
From: William Swallow <WSWALLOW -at- COMMSOFT -dot- NET>
Date: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 09:23:39 -0400

Let's all blame management for everything.

You are in charge of yourself. Period. Management is there to manage the
process. If you have nothing to do or if you feel you are spinning your
wheels, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!! You're not 10 years old anymore. Mommy's
not there to hold your hand and make sure you have something to do with
yourself. There's no more hand-holding.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I'm sick and tired of hearing people whine that
they are underappreciated or overworked or are stuck in a Dilbertesque hell.
DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!! Exercise your free will! Get a new job; confront
management; find something to do.

In the case below, sit the writer down, deal out ten lashes and tell this
person to get his/her act together. Tell this person that the poor quality
of work and lack of initiative resulting from this person is wearing you
down. Most important, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. (There's a recurring theme
here, I think.) If this person doesn't shape up, go to management and say
so. If they don't want to listen, suggest what the quality of work would be
like if you weren't here to set things straight.

Bill Swallow
Technical Writer
Aptis
a subsidiary of Billing Concepts
phone: 518.433.7698
fax: 518.433.7680
mailto:wswallow -at- commsoft -dot- net
http://www.aptissoftware.com

> -----Original Message-----
> The fault here lies with the manager or management team. As with any field
> (foreign languages, music, mathematics), the best way to learn to be a
> good
> tech writer is to do it. An entire year just proofreading? That's not only
> poor training, but I would imagine a huge waste of salary (assuming the
> writer was being paid as a writer and not as a proofer). The issue here is
> not that the writer is under-trained but that the writer has not been
> given
> the opportunity to train himself or herself. The best way to learn how to
> avoid mistakes is to make them. Perhaps this manager emerged fully trained
> from the forehead of Bill Gates and doesn't realize that most of us had to
> educate ourselves by fire before we became excellent.
>

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


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