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Subject:Re: State of the Technical Writing Field From:Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>, phil stokes <philstokes03 -at- googlemail -dot- com> Date:Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:34:08 -0800 (PST)
This isn't about the simple stuff, but about the extremes. Employer requirements can get kind of ridiculous. How many times have you seen ads that read, "Must have 8 years of experience with Joomla and XMetal" or something like that? A lot of ads specify experience with esoteric packages that are used by only a very small fraction of those who call themselves technical writers.
What is really happening with a lot of employer statements about tool experience requirements is, the company has built its business model around using that tool. When an ad specifies tool knowledge, that may be literally the only tool that everyone knows how to use. All their procedures are built on it, and they are scared to death of the cost and difficulty of the changes they would have to make if they went to something else.
--- On Wed, 11/17/10, phil stokes <philstokes03 -at- googlemail -dot- com> wrote:
From: phil stokes <philstokes03 -at- googlemail -dot- com>
Subject: Re: State of the Technical Writing Field
To: "Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Wednesday, November 17, 2010, 11:47 AM
>
> employer's demand for prior knowledge of tools
> can be uncompromising even if a twelve-year-old
> could learn the tool in half a week.
>
Hear that.
"Knowledge of MSWord required"
How is it different from "must have at least one hand, one eye and half a
brain"?
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