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Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing"

Subject: Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing"
From: Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: Monique Semp <monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 17:27:41 -0700

Looking back on my manager days, I would much rather build a pubs team from a bunch of programmers, lab or service techs who could string words together into coherent paragraphs and support them with a good editor and illustrator than from people educated as "one-person pubs teams" with no technical knowledge. Producing usable docs happens much more smoothly when the writers know the tech and are open to an editor's input on their grammar and composition.

And it's way easier to get engineers and other developers to talk to a writer who can look at the raw design and ask, "is it this, or is it that?" rather than "can you explain to me what this is and what it does?"

Gene Kim-Eng


On 3/21/2016 5:00 PM, Monique Semp wrote:



I was hired as a "Senior" tech writer for my very first tech writing job because a flexible (ok, maybe she was just desperate) tech pubs manager was willing to hire a programmer who could write a coherent paragraph :-). And happily, those were the days of companies having whole teams of writers, so there were mentors available to teach me, and sufficient staff to be productive while new writers were being trained.

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References:
"Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing": From: Cardimon, Craig
RE: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing": From: Dan Goldstein
Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing": From: Lauren
Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing": From: Gene Kim-Eng
Re: "Surviving the Dying Career of Technical Writing": From: Monique Semp

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