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Subject:Re: Expectations (possible rant - it IS Friday!) From:Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 19 Feb 2005 09:38:07 -0800 (PST)
Peter:
In enjoyed your posting and admire your wife's ethics!
I basically resigned from a software tester position
under similar circumstances.
I while on a contract assignment, I pressured into
developing test cases for software triggers for
launching intercontinental ballistic missiles -
without being given the opportunity to learn some real
important stuff.
Could they have given the assignment to in-house
staff? No, in house staff did not have the knowledge
either. Because no one had the knowledge to do the
job properly, was the client just trying to pawn off
"the dastardly deed" upon a contractor. You can not
convince me otherwise. Was it ethical to put an
unwary contractor in such a position? No.
I, like your wife, would have had to sign-off on the
quality of my work. Good God, talk about stress! No
way!
Lesson learned: If I want fair, I need to go to the
county seat. (That is where, once a year, fair is
held.)
One of the things that I like about TW is that, often,
the level of rigor required in analysis and design is
relatively minimal. While a TW may be "called upon
the carpet" (or however that saying goes) for an
inaccuracy or, heaven forbid, a grammar error, there
is usually all kinds of tolerance for us having
"holes" in our understanding of the user's domain or
the products functionality - at least relative to
something like testing.
Tony Markos
--- Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net> wrote:
The QA folks can have it much worse. My wife's not
the only QA person to have been fired (or cornered
into quitting) for refusing to sign off on material
not meeting specs, where the signature carries a
genuine legal liability. At one job she could not
claim, for instance, that she signed in ignorance of
the specs, because she was the author of the FDA
specs! She was fired for refusal to obey a direct
order to approve the out-of-spec material.
Had she passed it, a subsequent FDA inspection would
have ended her career or sent her to jail. (The
person who fired her was later fired.)
We tech writers are merely at fault for not being
omniscient, and are not usually asked to guarantee
that bad is good.
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