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Good luck, SB. I hope when you present a tech writing job description to your manager, your manager is responsive and helps you resolve the situation. I work in a similar situation but my manager turns a blind eye on it.
I work with someone who is a "project lead." He has been with the company for decades. Many people know how incompetent he is but no one does anything about it. (He does not even try to make the documents pretty.) Oh, and he also has the title of Senior Technical Writer because of the number of years he has been at the company. Not based on skills or ability or quality of work. NO, based on years. Ironically, he doesn't even view himself as a technical writer or enjoy writing. He has a technical, nonwriting background.
I cringe to think that if we were both applying for another job, he would get hired because of his title and his years of experience. I perform many functions of a senior tech writer but get no credit and no title. (Yes, I've asked. The title is based on number of years and nothing else.)
I read Gene's list of qualifications for a senior tech writer and that describes much of how I do my job. But the person who has this title and is in a position of authority over me is a passive aggressive, incompetent person who only tries to be a roadblock for me to get my work done. (He will nitpick things that I write and he can't even do his own work. It drives me crazy.)
He has the responsibility of editing and reviewing our documents (which infuriates me). He can edit an 800 page document in about 5 minutes. He does this by returning the doc to me, telling me that he knows nothing about the product and therefore cannot edit the material (and he is only responsible for error proofing the writing, not the technical content).
Has told SMEs in meetings that they have to provide him with any written information they want added to the documents. Of course, they do provide him with the information but often he forgets or just refuses to get it in the docs. (If he does add it though, of course it is unedited and not proofed.)
Does not provide me with information that I need such as document change requests and customer surveys.
Has told me that he believes the SMEs should provide us with the written procedures, software screen shots, and photographs.
When changes are incorporated into our template or documents based on my suggestions, he refuses to make these changes in his documents. (Won't even do this if a higher up tells him to.)
This guy is impossible to work with and many others agree and have had problems with him. So I work around him for the time being because I like the work I do despite him. He's at least 10 years away from retirement (ugh).
Yes, I've mentioned various things about him to higher-up management but they keep the blinders on and don't acknowledge my concerns. Isn't it easier to keep incompetent people around than it is to fire them?
JW
SB <sylvia -dot- braunstein -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
Well, ironically, he is a software engineer converted to technical writing.
On 2/24/08, Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
>
> My experience a long time ago in the far, far away galaxy of
> aerospace was that the majority of technical writers were former
> engineers, many of whom could take one look at a wet-behind-
> the-ears engineer's description of a "new" design proposal and
> point him to the records for an almost identical attempt 20 years
> earlier that had produced a spectacular exploding rocket aerial
> lightshow, then tell him how the problem had eventually been
> fixed. The first time I ever met a tech writer who did not have a
> technical background was in the early 90's at my first "high tech"
> (semiconductor) company, and they hired me because their
> "non-technical technical writers" were failing to grasp the tech
> of their new product line.
>
> Gene Kim-Eng
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sharon Burton"
> > In another galaxy far, far away, when most tech writers worked in places
> > like aerospace, apparently the engineers provided all or almost all of
> the
> > info and the writers edited it and made it look nice. (I'm not slamming
> any
> > one here, this is what I've been told by people who worked in the
> industry
> > for 30 or 40 years. YMMV)
>
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