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Barb Philbrick said something in her last post about an MA not making any
difference in your pay, at least in Northeast Ohio. I want to point out that
although I have nothing against Barb or Ohio, technical writers in Ohio are
generally poorly paid. As a graduate student (in Northwest Ohio) I was always
told to look for jobs outside of Ohio. My first TW job was in Akron, (northeast
Ohio) where I was paid rather badly. Once I moved to Illinois, my pay went up a
third again as much as I had made before. It's true that the standard of living
is higher here, but it's also true that now I can afford a car payment, and in
Akron I couldn't.
Other friends of mine who got jobs in Ohio have had the same sort of experience.
(please don't flame me about OH--I'm from Columbus, and love my home town, but
the pay scale really is better here).
Nora
merhar -at- alena -dot- switch -dot- rockwell -dot- com
P.S. I was told at my first job (a government contractor) that the more people
they had with Masters or Ph.D.s, the better they looked to the government. I
have yet to be told that my degree made me overqualified.
