Re: Conceit, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Competition (long)

Subject: Re: Conceit, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Competition (long)
From: "Bergen, Jane" <janeb -at- ANSWERSOFT -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 09:59:24 -0500

> From: Eric J. Ray [mailto:ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM]
> Now, if I didn't know better, I'd suspect that quite a few
> tech writers are awfully worried about untrained, under qualified,
> not-yet-graduates-of-the-school-of-hard-knocks people
> coming in and taking their jobs.

Yes, as a trained, qualified, graduate-of-the-school of hard knocks, I
am VERY concerned about people coming in and taking jobs. I witness it
every day. I get calls (as Mentoring Project manager of the local STC
chapter) weekly of people who "heard about tech writing" and they say
"well, I've got pretty good grammar skills. I know how to use Word. Can
you help me get a job as a technical writer? I hear it pays pretty
good." The sad part of this is that they DO find jobs. In this area,
tech writers appear to be in demand and less experienced people are
willing to work for less. They may be pretty good, but there are none of
them who would not be better with a little training.

> or they don't. I don't see why anyone in this profession would
> claim that people with non-technical-writing-related jobs
> (like, say, typists) cannot "grow into technical writers."
> I don't see how anyone could conclude that native talent
> is the one and only prerequisite for being a technical
> communicator.

There are a couple of operatives here, Eric. No one said they "cannot
grow into technical writers." I do maintain that typists "do not grow
into technical writers" -- a world of difference. If a typist takes
classes or undergoes some kind of real training, he or she may indeed
grow into a technical writer, but not BECAUSE the person was a typist.
Someone else made the very clear analogy of "nurses do not grow into
doctors"! The skill set of a typist when honed in no way makes or does
not make one a technical writer.

> Let me assure you that there's nothing so difficult about
> technical communication that intelligent, motivated people
> cannot learn to be exceptional technical communicators.

I absolutely agree with this. But "learning" and "growing into" are
different semantic concepts to me. The first implies an action and act
of will, the second implies a state or condition of being.
> (By the way, in 1984 I was flipping burgers at McDonalds.
> My undergraduate degree is in German and Secondary
> Education with one computer-related class and no
> engineering classes. By the end of this year I'll have
> co-authored 11 computer books and more manuals,
> articles, white papers, and other materials than I have
> time to count. If I had known about and listened to the
> "technical communication as rocket science" contingent,
> there's no telling what I'd be doing now.)

Flipping burgers got you through school....school is what made you a
technical writer.

Jane

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