Re: A dark take on Tech Writing...do you agree?

["Joel Vaillancourt" <vaillancourt -dot- joel -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Personally I couldn't agree more, but I'm cynical by nature ;)

I've been doing this for almost 10 years and have never considered it a
"career", it's simply a series of jobs that have enabled me to pay the
bills. To me a career is something that encompasses an upward path through a
series of related jobs, technical writing just doesn't allow for that in
general.

As a TW contractor for the Cdn Federal gov't on internal software projects
I'm at least blessed with making more than 95% of the general population and
having somewhat long-term gigs (multi-year).

I can only imagine what it must be like for private sector employees who
have to work unpaid overtime to meet ridiculous deadlines with no support
and those who are self-employed and actually have to look for work between
gigs rather than having headhunters do the looking for them.

When asked, I've never recommended TW as a "career" to anyone I liked and
I've had it pretty good over my "career".

Message: 12
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 09:46:54 -0700
From: "CL T" <straylightsghost -at- gmail -dot- com>
Subject: A dark take on Tech Writing...do you agree?
To: "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
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       <6d44877a0811040846xab611d1jf965a823a3c6d365 -at- mail -dot- gmail -dot- com>
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http://cli.gs/76aTnG

The opinion of one Tech Writer and their advice to aspiring TW's. Do you
agree with this dark take on our career?
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