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Being the only official technical communicator in my company, I
often work with marketing as well as engineering. It is really
amazing the difference in mindsets, goals, priorities, etc.
between these two areas. (And I am learning a few new dance
steps to avoid being caught between the two.)
I have noticed that with marketing writing, I really have to
watch sounding "salesy". When I do, the writing can sound
incredibly false. People don't want to know they are being
sold to. And how "salesy" I can get depends alot on my
audience. When I am writing to technical types, it is better
just to drop the sales pitch all together and concentrate
on the technology.
This job posting was an excellent example of marketing
verbage gone bad (at least for this audience). Obviously,
it did not do its job completely since people were actually
offended by it. It might have worked on a marketing group.
I would say that techwriters tend to be, at least, technical
enough to be wary of the "marketing hype".
Again, a really good example of why we should know our audience.
As to being a top performer, isn't that anyone who knows their
job and does it well? At least, it is in my book.
IMHO,
Melonie Holliman
The Technical Writer
ABM Data Systems, Inc.
Austin, Texas
> I could really take off on this piece of writing, but I sense this
> is not the right forum for it. Since I don't want to slam anyone,
> nor do I want to be flamed, I will merely say that I am really
> offended by it.
>
> In the interest of being constructive I'll throw this out for
> consideration: what does it mean to be a top performer in the
> context of technical writing?
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