Re: Interesting job description

[Keith Hood <bus -dot- write -at- gmail -dot- com>]

"As to why tech writers are the first to be let go in a downturn"

You are wrong. Tech writers are always in the first wave of layoffs because
their work is seen by bean counters as being non value added. Never mind
how important documentation may be. Tech writers are always (or at least,
too often) seen as being outside the pale because the company can't put a
price tag on their output and advertise it for sale. That is 99.999% of the
reason tech writers have so much turnover. And part of the reason they are
so often seen as expendable, as second-class citizens, is because of the
kind of employee caste system that YOU have defended.


"the more your value is based on what you know, the better off you are."

Road apples. If that were true, companies would lay off salesmen before
engineers and tech writers. Knowledge has never protected any TW from
RIFfing.


But the most telling part of your post, I think, is this passage:

" CEOs move the needle more than programmers"

So, according to you, a CEO whose primary function is to schmooze the SEC
and investors turns out more marketable product than an engineer? A CEO is
more responsible for making a product better and therefore more valuable
than a QA tester? I think we now know everything we need to know about how
you think.
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