'Know thy audience'; was: RE: What is 'well Written'?

[Ned Bedinger]

Elizabeth J Allen wrote:
>
> In this world, where I was recently informed that my $dayjob will no 
> longer grant me stock options or bonus because I do not hold the title 
> of engineer, I wonder what benefit there is in further distancing 
> ourselves from the field of engineering.

Sorry to hear about the downgrading of your package.  I recall a 
techwriter a couple of years ago who posted here that he had had to 
leave Hawaii because his status (and pay) as tech writer had been 
downgraded to non-professional.  Boy, he was honking mad, living in a 
garage in California, looking for work.

This trend toward discounting tech writers usually doesn't usually 
bounce off the _engineer_ title, but rather off of _professional_.  
Engineers are professionals, tech writers are not.  Where I live, the 
professional designation was reduced to a simple heuristic.  It was a 
matter of how much a knowledge worker was paid. 

At that time, 10-15 years ago, the cut-off was something like $35/hr.  
If you made less, you weren't professional.  Sad but true, all of this 
stuff was devised for codification into law by business interests, not 
professional associations. If they can save money by declaring us to be 
blue-collar knowledge workers, we pretty much are bound to let them do 
so.  It doesn't change our distance from the engineers or the work we 
do, just our compensation package, and job stability.
I