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>
> Fears:
> If this continues, my co-worker and myself fear that every chapter
> that she writes will have to be extensively re-written, in effect doubling
> the amount of work we already have to do.
> ...
> Are we being jealous, petty, and difficult, or do you guys believe
> we have legitimate concerns? Anyone else experience this type of thing?
Your fears are justified and misguided. Hiring new help is always
frustrating. Your company needs a training guide and style guide for
documentation. If you do not have one and you have part-time writers, how
can you expect anyone to blend in. If each of your company's manuals have a
different style, then your customers suffer.
New hires, regardless of the level they come in on, need mentoring. If only
to assimilate their styles into the official or unofficial corporate style.
And by style I mean everything from graphic layout of pages to
sentence/paragraph/section/chapter/manual construction.
I have hired many writers directly from undergraduate programs. They are
all very productive writers now. But it took a big hit of my time to train
and work with them and allow them the time needed to get used to corporate
writing instead of academic writing.
Additionally, I would hate to have someone look at my unfinished pre-alpha
documentation. It hasn't been spell-checked or copy-edited. I have many
"known" problems with certain constructions (restrictive vs. nonrestrictive
clauses, etc.). I catch them in the edit. Because I know my writing style,
this doesn't bother me. My best senior writer has a completely different
writing style (I hired her 10 years ago from Michigan Tech undergrad). We
occasionally argue (when we have nothing better to do) over whether either
one of our processes has advantages. We talk about this to new hires as
well.
Finally, a new writer needs mentoring, but more than anything else, a new
writer needs to be included in the department process. Can you imagine what
the writer might be thinking if she subscribes to techwr-l and recognizes
this scenario?
So talk to her and help her out. There is nothing wrong with a strong
copy-edit. If she's as good as you think, her next drafts will be major
improvements.
