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Re: Damnit Jim, I'm a Writer, not a Programmer II: The Wrath of Kahn
Subject:Re: Damnit Jim, I'm a Writer, not a Programmer II: The Wrath of Kahn From:David Castro <thetechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sat, 7 Jul 2001 06:25:27 -0700 (PDT)
Andrew Plato said:
> I think the problem here is the class of writers who see their mastery of
> English or usability as their sole talent. Most companies simply do not
> value this skill as highly as they value writers who have more extensive
> technical skills - such as programming.
>
> If you consider that our profession has two core skill sets (shown in
> order of importance):
>
> 1. TECHNICAL
> 2. COMMUNICATION
>
> You have to be good at BOTH.
Oh, how true this is! I was recently working with a programmer at my company
(which creates middleware that enables ODBC access to mainframe databases), and
he was astounded that I was actually asking questions that made sense. And he
just went on and on about what I had done with his text. And I have never seen
this guy compliment anyone.
At that point, I understood why my boss' boss, when he was hiring me, said that
the company had never had a *technical* technical writer. Heck, they didn't
even know that they existed.
It gets better...from the sounds of it, I'm the first writer who has ever asked
to buy a book on the databases/file systems that we support (Adabas, Datacom,
OS/390, VSE, and so on). None of the previous writers *wanted* to know that
kind of information. That boggles my mind.
Anyway, I have worked with technical writers who actually knew what they were
writing about (hi, Martha!), and I have worked with those who really had no
clue. Guess which ones I prefer working with?
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