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In the companies I've worked for as a publications manager, the titles
had so much overlap that any one of them could have done any of the
work, and someone working at the most junior level could have outearned
someone at the most senior. Most companies get their job titles from
standardized HR job descriptions that can be plugged into industry salary
comparison programs, and I'd say the most important criteria for most of
them in deciding which title to assign to an individual employee was either
(a) years in the profession, (b) the title the employee had at their last job
or (c) which description's median salary came up as the amount they had
budgeted to hire. Often I'll write a req for a writer, choose a candidate
and be told by HR that the person needs to be brought in at a different
grade than the one I'd put in the req. And in the cases where I was
brought in as the sole writer in the company, I was always the "senior
technical writer" until I got clearance to hire and became the supervisor or
manager, as many companies have rules that say one has to actually have
subordinates to hold a management title.
However, on paper at least, job descriptions do tend to increase the number
of "may be required to's" and decrease the level of supervision required for
the person in them, so in theory I'd say the quote is sound.
Gene Kim-Eng
At 10:25 AM 2/26/2003 -0500, John Posada wrote:
Hi, guys
Below is a discussion I had with someone offline...names have been deleted.
The issue I'd like to address is the part about senior/junior writers.
>From my perspective, the senior designation isn't based on the position
hierarchy at a location, but the writer's ability to perform their job at
varying degrees of complexity and independence and with certain levels of
direction.
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