Re: Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years - Help!
My situation is this. I work for a major defense contractor that employs many tech writers.
AND
At the moment we have a dozen or more hi tech programs, at least 500 or more programmers and engineers (many with PhDs) and me, the only full-time writer. There is also 1 contract writer who hopes to be full time quite soon.
Is this a contradiction, or are the other writers part-time? If there are, indeed, other writers, they must be working under the same, or similar, conditions as you. How do they do it? Is it possible to approach them and find out how they cope with must be an equally frustrating situation?
Role of the Tech Writer: Maybe I am wrong, but I think tech writers are part of the development team - along with the programmers and engineers. We sit in on the technical meetings and know the product or program as well as any of the other technical professionals. We provide input in areas such as usability and GUI design. We test the software (if it is a software product). We determine what documentation needs to be created and how it will be created and by whom. We write, we edit, we rewrite, and at the very end we publish somehow - hardcopy, PDF, Word, HTML, XML, etc.Um....not necessarily. Perhaps in an ideal world, the tech writer would be in equal footing with the development and engineering. If you have been able to do all those things in previous jobs, then I think you've been fortunate. Perhaps it depends on the product....In my job, I don't see anything until the specs and requirements are all in place, and, with rare exception, the product hits the test environments. In the course of writing, I often find defects and report such to testers (I am part of the QA team, but function independently as a writer), but testing is not one of my duties.
The bottom line is your health. No job is worth a hospital visit.
Good luck!
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