Posted by octopusprime on February 11, 2004, at 21:12:23
In reply to Re: Calling all members of the IHMJ Club » Penny, posted by fallsfall on February 11, 2004, at 13:20:02
<delurks after an extended unannounced absence>
fallsfall and penny - i am a tech writer, and i see myself in both of your posts! penny's job reminds me of my job, too.
penny, i get that same sinking feeling about abject stupidity in my workplace. (note to marketing guy: powerpoint is NOT a graphic design tool!!!!) the only way around it is the way fallsfall describes in her post below. you have to be in your coworkers' faces all the time, listening to what they're doing and proactively contributing. once your coworkers understand precisely what it is you do (which is hard sometimes in big organizations like a university) and have seen your good work, they will come to you.
however, this kind of stuff is HARD when you hate your job and you're depressed and you secretly wish everybody else would just die already and oh look, there's the internet, i'll just surf a bit, la la la.
so really i have no good advice. really, hard work is not all it's cracked up to be, especially when you get paid the same whether you work hard or not. so if you could practice some zen calming techniques (deep breathing, heavy drinking, whatever works) and surf the internet some more, and you're satisfied with that, then cool. otherwise you are facing long hard work against ingrained corporate culture which will take a long time and has a medium chance of success.
good luck! and eat cookies.
> Your job reminds me of the Tech Writer's job in a company that writes software. The writers have to have a manual ready when the software ships, but the programmers never tell them when the design for the software changes. Programmers particularly like to change the look of the screens at the last minute (because it is easy to do for the programmers, and they've been worrying about if the screen works at all before that). This means that every single picture in the document has to change, along with a bunch of descriptions.
>
> Most Tech Writers I know get immensely frustrated. There was one, though, at my last company who decided that it was HIS job to collect information about changes, rather than the Programmer's job to tell him. So he went to lots of meetings and gabbed with people in the hall, and offered to do extra things (that would let him get to see more information). He took the problem inherent in the job and made it his personal challenge. It really worked for him (and for us!). But he's the only Tech Writer I've ever met (and I know a bunch of them) who has successfully done this.
>
> So, you are NOT alone!
poster:octopusprime
thread:312042
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040209/msgs/312263.html