Re: Techno-fuddyduddy getting anxious

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

I would say I'm a 3 or 4 as well, to a great extent because I concentrate 
most of my techno-absorption efforts at ramping up to 8 or so on what I'm 
actually documenting

Luxuriously funded, tell-us-what-we-need-and-we'll-spring-for-it startups 
went away with the dotcoms.  Today's startups are back to pre-dotcom SOP, 
spending as little as possible to conserve limited capital so they don't 
crash and burn before their IPO.  I haven't seen any places like the first 
startup I ever worked at, where the office was furnished with old lawn 
chairs and folding tables they got at Goodwill, so I guess there's still a 
good supply of affordable used office fittings from defunct mortgage and 
realtor offices.

Most likely you will be asked to write the first set of docs in either Word 
(if they don't know about OpenOffice and LibreOffice, tell them and watch 
them react as if you just pulled something sharp out of their backsides), or 
if you're not their first attempt at getting docs done, whatever tool their 
last contractor convinced them to buy that nobody in-house knows how to use. 
The flip side is, being able to walk in the door 1099 with your own computer 
loaded with genuine tech writer tools that you know sideways, slantways, 
longways, backways, frontways and squareways can be a big plus with a lot of 
them and you won't find yourself locked out of very many startups because 
you don't know some exotic authoring tool.

BTW, I'm still using a flip phone I got in 2005, and I haven't ever used 
text messaging, the camera or any of the multimedia functions.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nancy Allison" <maker -at- verizon -dot- net>