Employee experience dilemma....

[Atticus Fisher <Atticus_Fisher -at- pciwiz -dot- com>]

	To All:

	I'm going to delurk for a moment to ask for advice regarding a
writer in our department.

	Situation:
	We are a small doc department (three full time and a few part-time)
in, as is typically the case these days, a fast-growing company. Recently,
another full time writer was brought on board. Let's call her Lisa. Lisa is
young, probably no more than 23, with no technical writing experience. She
was originally hired into the technical support department, but for whatever
money-saving or political reason, was brought over to our department as a
full-time writer. I'm not exactly sure what screening processes were used,
if any, when she was considered for the writing position. 

	Regardless of the circumstances, I have found her to be very bright,
knowledgeable about our products, and possessing of what appear to be decent
writing skills. 

	Problem:
	She has been "tasked" (awful word) with writing an entire user guide
and reference manual, pretty much from scratch, for one of our new products.
Smelling danger, myself and a co-worker asked our manager if it would be OK
to check her work. She said OK. Of course, the chapters we received from
Lisa were full of errors, awkward constructions, and some bad grammar that
required extensive (and I mean extensive) revision to bring them in line
with our departmental standards and style.

	Fears:
	If this continues, my co-worker and myself fear that every chapter
that she writes will have to be extensively re-written, in effect doubling
the amount of work we already have to do.

	Assessment:
	We quickly realized that with little or no documentation experience,
Lisa should have be given "junior writer" status and should *never* have
been handed such a large responsibility . It's obvious that she needs to
undergo mentoring and a proper period of training before being given large
tasks like the one described above.

	What to do?
	So....what do we do? My co-worker and I feel that we need to discuss
this issue with our manager, but want to avoid stepping on toes or
second-guessing hiring decisions. We want to propose a proper course of
training and mentoring for Lisa and thus prevent laborious re-writes down
the road. My co-worker has been in the industry for years, and I have an
advanced writing degree (MFA), so we feel we are both qualified (and
justified) to bring our issue to the table.

	Are we being jealous, petty, and difficult, or do you guys believe
we have legitimate concerns? Anyone else experience this type of thing?

	Advice greatly appreciated.

	Atticus