Re: Organizational Structure

["Jody R. Lorig" <jlorig -at- KAVOURAS -dot- COM>]

Bernie commented:

<snip>
> Certainly, your creditability as a manager will be on trial.  How would you
> reply to a statement such as, "We hope that you're not going to tell us that
> writing is an art form."  This once happened to me on my first day in the job.

My response would probably be something to the effect of "Since you
feel that writing isn't an art form, then you must also feel that any
engineer can design any type of product. Since I'm also a domestic
engineer at my home, I will expect to be paid an engineering salary
here."

But seriously...

For some reason, many older engineers I have had to deal with feel
that anyone with an engineering degree can write meaningful
documentation. Their reasoning seems to be in that since they may
have had a course in technical report writing in school, coupled with
the fact that they spent so much time writing papers for the various
subjects in school, they are qualified to present information for use
by others. The hardest thing about these people is the amount of
education that we must pass along to them to show them that there is
more to writing than putting a bunch of words on paper.

Some of the things I have used to show them that there is more
involved in documentation are questions about format, style, type
font selection, audience analysis, educational level of the user,
revision tracking of releases, estimating the time needed for
writing, editing, revision, etc..

Hopefully, this person will get the point. If not, then
perhaps one of the questions we should have asked at the interview
should have been about how documentation is viewed at this company.

HTH
Jody Lorig
JLorig -at- Kavouras -dot- com