RE: Not Technical Enough

["Stevens, Ananda" <Ananda_Stevens@xxxxxxxx>]

I'm seeing only a small portion of this discussion, but when I saw 
this, I just had to pitch in...

> I'd prefer to say that, when push comes to shove, good writers 
> with a solid technical background will be kept, and good writers 
> without that kind of background will be laid off.

I HAVE SEEN THIS HAPPEN. 

The company I work for got bought out by a larger company. And then 
the buyer got bought by a second company. Both sales happened 
within one year.

Originally, we had four tech writers in our group. Two got laid 
off: the ones without the significant technical background. 

Later, the first buying company's management realized that yes, 
indeed, we did need four writers. We hired back ONE of the two who 
were laid off: the one with more aptitude for technical subjects. 
We hired another writer, one who had some good technical knowledge 
and aptitude to learn more technical stuff. 

> The fact is that there are one heck of a lot of successful 
> authors ho never went beyond the basic English classes we all 
> took.

NONE of the people in our group have English-related degrees, or
majors, or even minors. 

> Successful writers will tell you most of their skills were 
> self-taught.

Mentoring helps, too, in helping someone who has decent writing 
skills become a good *technical* writer. 

> ...survival over the long term as an Engineering Writer during 
> good times and bad requires a broad technical background. If you 
> don't start out with that..., [you could] acquire it through 
> working on diverse projects for different employers.... 
> But I'll settle for the easier way: Get technically grounded 
> first.

We finally figured out what we needed to look for in a tech writer
candidate: technical *aptitude*, interest in learning highly-
technical stuff, and ability to help others learn. Once we find 
those, *then* we start looking at writing samples. 

--Ananda Stevens
Technical Publications Specialist 
ananda.stevens@windriver.com

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