Re: Senior Tech Writer classification

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

Is being at the top of your profession really a problem
if there's income headroom?  

Where do you want to go from where you are?

Instead of playing games with job titles like "information
developer," technical writer pay grades should be on a 
par with developer grades, which puts a senior writer in 
the same "boat" as a senior developer or engineer.

If you're writing for a tech company, the Radfords are 
about as accurate as it gets.  Radford tech survey data 
is at least targeted to technology companies (and from 
technology companies with the interest and resources 
to spend money on joining the survey at that), so your 
compensation is not being compared to that of someone 
with the same title who is writing "rinse, lather, repeat" 
(not saying this is necessarily less valuable, but the 
reality is that it's less highly paid).  Woe unto you if your 
company is using the DOL data that the current STC 
surveys are based on.

Gene Kim-Eng




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "beelia" <beelia -at- gmail -dot- com>

> At that point, I realized that most of my future colleagues at that company
> are probably in the same boat, and perhaps I shouldn't be rocking it. After
> I got assurances from HR that there is room to move financially on the STW
> track, and that they're totally OK with printing "Online Help Developer" on
> my business cards, I decided to drop the matter.
> 
> So now I'm curious - have many of you been stuck in this classification? If
> so, do you care?
> 
> In short, do job titles matter? Has public perception of secretaries or
> stewardesses changed because they are now known as administrative assistants
> or flight attendants?

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