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Re: Just out of curiosity - ratio of TW to training? or Marketing?
Subject:Re: Just out of curiosity - ratio of TW to training? or Marketing? From:kafkascampi <kafkascampi -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> Date:Wed, 18 Dec 2013 11:44:53 -0800
Julie asked "Ratio of technical writers to members of the training
department..."
-
Technical Writers : Other
Engineering 1:10
Marketing 1:5
Support 1:3
Training 1:1 (or really 1:2, since I do a lot of the training work as well)
Marginally creepy posable snowmen: 1: 26
Our company is about 70 total. Not counting the snowmen.
cheers
Chris
On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:13 PM, McLauchlan, Kevin <
Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> I can't speak to the first two, 'cuz both Training and Marketing live in
> another country, and there are writers in several other countries, but I'd
> say that for our office:
>
> TW: Engineers 3:~70
> TW: Support 3:6
>
> Of course, we are just getting our third writer in January, and we
> recently absorbed another company that has no writers and about 20
> employees who now share our office, but haven't been "integrated" yet, and
> the corporation bought another company in (mostly) California whose
> products and development we are taking on, but of which only two engineers
> (out of dozens) are actually making the move to the Great White North (it
> was -26 degrees C overnight without the wind-chill, and got up to -12 C on
> this fine Fall day ) and the rest are bailing or being booted. All of
> which to say, Hannah's numbers are probably a good rough guess for our
> numbers.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hannah Drake
> Sent: December-17-13 1:52 PM
> To: Julie Stickler
> Cc: Technical Writing
> Subject: Re: Just out of curiosity - ratio of TW to training? or Marketing?
>
> TW:Training: 3:0
> TW:Marketing 3:3
> TW:Engineers 3: ~70
> TW:Support 3:10
>
> (I added the support team since I think documentation definitely aids
> support and vice versa, at least with us)
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com>
> wrote:
>
> > I've seen discussions of the ratio of technical writers to engineers,
> > and what the idea ratio should be (and the answer, as with all things,
> > seems to be "it depends").
> >
> > But have we ever had a discussion of either of the following?
> >
> > Ratio of technical writers to members of the training department (at
> > my current gig it is 2 to 1, previous job it was 3 to 2, before that 1
> > to 1, tends to be similar staffing levels).
> >
> > Ratio of technical writers to members of the marketing department? (at
> > my current gig it is 2 TW to 14 in marketing. I can't say that I've
> > ever thought to look before now. So I have no idea what is typical.)
> >
> >
> >
> > What about at your place of employment?
> >
> > --
> > Julie Stickler
> > http://heratech.wordpress.com/
> > Blogging about Agile and technical writing
> >
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>
> --
> Hannah L. Drake
> Lead Technical Documentation Specialist
> Formulatrix, Inc.
>
> 781-788-0228 x137 (office)
> 617-610-6456 (cell)
> hannah.drake.formulatrix (skype)
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