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Subject:Re: If you can't lick 'em, join 'em From:Tamara Peters <1455 -at- MN2 -dot- LAWSON -dot- LAWSON -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 5 May 1995 08:51:00 CDT
Hey, not a bad idea!!!
This may start a new thread (sorry, flame me privately if you want), but my
group has been suggesting titles such as Knowledge Engineer or Knowledge
Analyst. We have to know almost as much as the Software Engineers and
Systems Analysts about the product, AND we have to be able to quickly
present it in a compact, easy-to-use form, both on paper and online. I have
read design docs by ALL of the programming staff, and only 1 out of 30 has
written anything comprehensible. So we need double the knowledge, have to
use two sets of tools, and all for less pay and less status.
What interests me here is that while we apparently have come to a good
conclusion, we have had difficulty forwarding the idea at work. Prof. Krahn
suggests one very good reason. We have also been exploring issues such as
personality/learning styles (mostly Myers-Briggs) and male-female
work/communication issues. We don't want to stereotype, but we suspect that
the fact that our writing group has been 100% female (until two weeks ago,
the programmers were all male) and mostly MB introverts has an impact on the
slow progress we've made.
Anybody have any similar experiences or comments?
Tamara Peters
tamara -dot- peters -at- lawson -dot- com
----------
From: TECHWR-L
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
Subject: If you can't lick 'em, join 'em
Date: Thursday, 4 May, 1995 1:52PM
Re: the post on May 2 by Chas. Bosdet about
technical writers/engineers/engineers who write.
Perhaps we could rename technical communicators to
Word Engineers. Then they might get more respect and
more pay.
The problem with being an expert at something that everyone
does is that the nonexperts subscribe to the fallacy that,
if everybody does it, nobody can be an expert at it.
Think about it: We all sleep, but we also allow for the fact
that there could be experts on it, people who more than we do
about it. Why not writing?
Is a puzzlement!
AKRA
Albert E. Krahn
Instructor, English Department AKRA -at- MUSIC -dot- LIB -dot- MATC -dot- EDU
Milwaukee Area Technical College Phone: (414) 297-6519
Milwaukee, WI 53233-1443 Fax: (414) 297-7990
