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From: Roberta Hennessey
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2011 8:57 AM
Subject: Career|Skill Advice
>>
As a tech writer in the current environment, I am considering pursuing additional training. I am looking for opinions on what skill and knowledge people feel is important today and will be in the future. I'm looking at this more as a way to gain more "employer desired" skills. I'm considering taking some usability courses to enhance my skill set. Any opinions? What have others done?
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The ability to read code. It can start as basic as knowing actual coding of HTML, but trying to find some lower-level or continuing education college programs you can take to learn the basics of some coding (like Java) is a help, even if you don't plan on switching from Tech Writing to engineering. Knowing HTML coding cuts your dependency on tools to help you convert things over to HTML formats, and a general knowledge of code structures (and how not to break things) has always been a great help to me. Can I quickly program Java code? No. But I can look at it and troubleshoot where there may be problems, and my developers can be certain I know enough where I'm allowed to poke around the actual code for the product to correct things like grammar that is part of the code, and just see what the code is actually doing, without breaking anything else.
- V
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