Re: "Are technical writers the unsung heroes of document generation?"

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

My work has never been in "software technical writing," so I and any 
writers reporting to me have always been exempts except during a couple 
of agency gigs I've done. And even if I didn't have to pay for it, my 
thinking has always been that if  writers are working 60 hours a week on 
a regular basis, either I need more writers or there's something wrong 
with the way the writers are working.

But talking to other writers who do fall into that category, what I 
observe is that since the dotcom bubble burst back in 2001, 
undisciplined companies whose employees work crazy long hours have 
largely been supplanted by more conventionally run ones that avoid 
having their people work OT except during occasional crunches, and they 
pay the OT.

There's also a lot of collusion going on between employers and technical 
writers who still want to be exempt professionals and not hourly workers 
to cloak their positions in titles like "information architect" or 
"documentation manager" so they can argue that they aren't really 
"software technical writers." Keep in mind that most technical writers 
don't really want to be non-exempts in the first place.

Gene Kim-Eng



On 6/23/2015 10:05 AM, Janoff, Steven wrote: