Whither TRUE Senior-Level TW Opportunities?

["Kendall V. Scott" <SoftDocWiz -at- AOL -dot- COM>]

Recently, there was a post about a tech writing position in Ft. Lauderdale. I
was happy to see that the company wanted someone familiar with Unix, but when
I read further, my heart sank, as I saw what I'm seeing entirely too much
these days: "one to three years experience."

Why is it that virtually *never* do I see ads for people with 8, 10, 12, 15
years' experience?

If employers want someone who can read code (as more than a few do, based on
postings I've been seeing), why don't they go out and hire someone who has a
computer science degree and programming experience but who revels in
analyzing other people's code instead of writing his own?

Wouldn't it make sense, at least in certain situations, to bring someone in
who grew up on structured techniques, and later learned information
engineering and OO, a person who knows all phases of the "traditional" SDLC
like the back of his hand--i.e., someone who may just know more about
methodology than the programmers?

Does anyone out there *really* get satisfaction from interviews with
developers who generally (a) would rather chew on broken glass than talk to
writers and (b) have a dubious ability to communicate what a system does or
will do, when it makes so much more sense to go to the horse's mouth?

I apologize if this comes across as just so much ranting and/or whining.
Perhaps the fact that I'm sitting in a dump in New York City unable to pay
the heating bill has something to do with it. In any case, though, I'd
certainly appreciate constructive answers to my questions, either public or
private. And if there's someone out there who'd like to talk to me about
coming to work for them in Boston or Seattle or Dallas or Silicon Valley or
Colorado--or anywhere else, even Ft. Lauderdale at this point--I'd be most
grateful indeed.


Kendall Scott
softdocwiz -at- aol -dot- com