Menu
What's new
Troll Kingdom

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

I Want to Be a Dentist...

Volpone

Volpone

Zombie Hunter
...well, not really. But since it's Christmastime, and I'm in a similar situation I thought I'd harken to that other blonde misfit, Herbie the Elf in "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

So a big part of my professional career has been as a Marine officer. But I got out, because I didn't really enjoy it and I knew I could never be great at it. Since then I've sort of figured out what I do enjoy and am good at: writing. I have a knack for understanding data and organizing it and converting it into information. I like to do it too.

So I found a gig for a technical writer for a local firm and applied for it. I haven't heard anything back but the other day I got an e-mail from them that I should apply for a personnel manager position.

It's like, "You were a Marine officer?! Why would you want to be a technical writer? You should have a job where you tell people what to do!"

I realize the e-mail was most likely generated by an automated HR software, but it still annoys me. I'm pigeonholed into a career I don't enjoy and am mediocre at and I can't figure out how to make someone give me a shot at a career I know I could excel at. :S:
 
Love Child said:
I have a relative and a friend who is a technical writer. I envy them becuase it seems like a really cool career.
Click to expand...
No shit. You take complex technical things and figure out how to organize and document them in a way that people will understand them and be able to operate and maintain them.
 
I couldn't have a career like that. I need a job that allows me to get up and move, but I do appreciate those who *can* handle it.

Volpone, just keep applying to different places. You'll get a bite sooner or later.

Of course, in today's economy, who knows?
 
Interesting. I'm a bit thrown off by the "engineering" word in the title--usually they want some kind of you know, engineering, degree for those jobs--but that's really sort of what I got brought out to Hawaii to do: write about process improvement.
 
Volpone said:
Interesting. I'm a bit thrown off by the "engineering" word in the title--usually they want some kind of you know, engineering, degree for those jobs--but that's really sort of what I got brought out to Hawaii to do: write about process improvement.
Click to expand...

The type of "process engineering" I'm talking about is not really engineering: it's translation. Take the R&D, Phd type engineering instruction on how to build/test a part, and "simplify" it. A lot of highly technical people forget the details (i.e. they'll say "Measure Power across the C5 circuit") when writing instructions. The non-engineering part of process engineering is translating that into simple instructions (i.e. 1. turn on power. 2 attach meter at test point 1 and test point 2. 3. set meter to measure amps in the .1 to 1 amp range, 4. etc) that a general tech can understand.

That's your "sideways" entry into tech writing.

-SB
 
We had a professor for my MBA who, for whatever other faults he might have, made us read "The Goal", by Elija Goldratt. It's a parable of this guy who has to turn around the factory in his old hometown or the company is going to go under. On top of that he's got problems at home too. Over the course of the story he gradually figures out continuous process of improvement that winds up saving the plant and his marriage and everyone living happily ever after. A pretty good read if "process engineering" is your bag.

But yeah. That's the sort of gig I need to figure out how to get--where you go from one "problem" to the next one. Once you "fix" a project you move on to the next one.
 
Or read "David's sling" for "Process and S/W geeks save the USA".

Contractors are expendable...but if you can soak up enough cash per job it's nice to be your own boss.
-SB
 
I'm interested in hearing more about "David's Sling". Google comes up with an Israeli missile system and a sci-fi book from the 1980s.

As much as I think consultants are good and don't officially approve of the Demotivators posters that parody Successories, I do chuckle at one.

I forget what the graphic is, but the caption is:
CONSULTING
Because you can't be a part of the solution, but there's money to be made in prolonging the problem.

:lol:
 
Well, I don't get to be a dentist today. Or a technical writer. I stopped in to set up an interview time and actually got an ad hoc interview. In retrospect, they say you should avoid that sort of thing because the interviewer hasn't had time to prepare and you may not be as prepared as you would be if you had an actual appointment but in this case I think it was a good call.

Showing up in a suit was also a good call. Portland is incredibly informal, so it can be awkward if you're in a suit and your interviewer is in jeans and a Polar Fleece jacket, but the person I talked to was also in a suit so it was a good call. Another thing that looked promising was that the receptionist said the guy was also a Marine. When you're dealiing with another Marine, we have shared backgrounds and understand what we can "bring to the table".

When I met the guy, his goatee established he was at best a retired Marine. And the Army badge leash, Army wristwatch, and rack of challenge coins pretty much established that he wasn't a retired Marine, he was a retired soldier.

Now I don't have a problem with soldiers, but there are some soldiers that have a problem with Marines. Whether it is what we did in Belleau Wood in WWI totally upstaging the Army, the flag raising at Iwo Jima upstaging the Army in WWII, or that some Marine in dress blues stole their childhood sweetheart at some point, there are soldiers that for some reason don't like Marines. And the overwhelming "Love Me Wall" in this guy's office and the fact that he'd been a career soldier sort of hinted that he was that sort.

The other problem is that Marines are generalists, while soldiers are specialists. Heck, the Army even has a "specialist" rank. You do the job you went to school for and you have the patches, badges, and pins that say that is the job you do. A Marine, on the other hand, you can tell a 2nd Lt straight out of school to design quarter million dollar audiovisual system that can make encrypted videoconference calls and to write up the procurement contract for it and if he says "I don't know how to do that," you can say "You're a Marine. Figure it out."

To be fair, I did bobble the first question. He asked me what technical writing I'd done and I hadn't done any technical writing but that I'd done process engineering and several marketing plans.

So then he asked me what I knew about a certain, specific piece of technical equipment that was used in the industry and said that there was no way I'd be able to do the job if I didn't have extensive knowledge of it. Well, instead of telling him that the job description hadn't mentioned anything about that I said something about that that sort of thing isn't that difficult to pick up. This probably wasn't a mistake, but I should've followed up with specific examples like the one above. Because instead I opened the door for him to shut me down.

It wasn't a complete abortion. He said he'd forward my resume along to the recruiters in the other departments, so I still need to write a nice "Thank You" card, but it always irks me a bit when I run into that sort of closed-minded attitude. Shit, if I had any tact I could've delicately pointed out a career in Army infantry doesn't exactly qualify you to be an HR person but that someone took the chance and gave him a shot.

Ah well. So it begins.
 
Eh. The more I think about this, the more it burns me. It is the old Catch-22--need a job to get experience but can't get a job without experience in spades. Unless you're working in this industry there is no way you'd have familiarity with the equipment. But unless you have familiarity with the equipment you can't work in the industry.

And it was a crock anyway. Because it wouldn't have been like I'd have immediately started out writing manuals from scratch with no guidance. The job was about revising and editing existing documents while working with other departments and a publications supervisor.

Meh.
 
Job hunting sucks far worse than actually having a job. Wasted the whole morning driving down to one place in the suburbs and back. Then I went to another place in the afternoon and they'd moved. So I wasted meter money. Then I wasted a good amount of time trying to find their new location. (It turned out I had looked up the right location the night before, but it conflicted with the location on the job description so I threw that address away. :mad: )

Then I popped into Powell's Books for 5 minutes to grab a book I knew they had there but it was misfiled so in the extra 5 minutes it took me to locate it I got a parking ticket--I mean, I could see the meter maid, 4 cars down. :mad: Oh and it is possible that the second site visit was even less effective than the first because I wasn't able to even sweet talk my way past the receptionist to an HR troll let alone to someone who could actually make a decision.

I hate it. You just burn a lot of time, effort, and money running around and having people tell you "no" until you finally find someone who says "yes." Job hunting is the only job you keep by sucking at it. Oh, and not only is it a sales job, the product you are selling is yourself; totally whoring yourself out, so if people aren't "buying" it sort of says you aren't good enough.
 
Gah. Indecision...

I know I need some software. I absolutely need MS Project and I almost certainly need Quickbooks. But I get to the point where it is time to whip out the credit card and hesitate. I hate to be spending fairly significant chunks of money when no money is coming in.

Still. To get work, it is useful to know Project. And it sure wouldn't hurt while doing the actual job search either. And if I opt to move forward with a business idea I had, I'll need Quickbooks. Even if I just decide to do some consulting, I'll need it. So I might as well buy them.

The last stumbling block though is that I went to the Inuit site (Quickbooks was developed by Eskimos dontchaknow?) and they've got like, four flavors of Quickbooks. They've got a free trial online version, a Simple, a Pro, and a Premiere. Simple is basically 100 clams and each step up is double that. I actually thing Simple will work for me right now, but the inclination is to buy Pro.

Well, enough yammering. Got to get busy.
 
OK. So while I was mulling which version of QuickBooks to get I decided to zap off and pick up Project. Because my desktop still runs W2K I needed Project 2003. Found it--and at a really good price. Got 3/4 of the way through the purchase process JUST about to send credit card info when my Spidey Sense went off. Some quick work with Google revealed that the site I was on sold pirated software.

After searching again I found a couple places with legitimate versions of Project 2003--for 2-3 times the price of the current version!

So now it gets down to either sucking it up and retiring my trusty W2K OS or paying too much for obsolete software. :mad:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top