[Stc-ac] doc pay scales

[Mysti Berry]

At my current company, apps and platform writers have the same titles, but there's sufficient breadth in the pay scales to compensate the skills of more technical writers.

I think it's sad that there's been such a decline in the status of tech writers since the early 90s, when (at least at Sybase) we were paid very close to what developers of our experience levels were paid.

Companies that treat tech writers like fancy secretaries get the docs they deserve :)

Mysti
P.S. these cranky opinions are mine alone and do not represent my current employer.


Message: 1
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:14:12 -0500
From: Rose Norman <normanr at uah.edu>
Subject: [Stc-ac] question about job titles
To: stc-ac at mailman.stc.org
Message-ID: <200809151818.m8FIID5L005331 at email.uah.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

A manager from a local company asked me this question, and agreed
that I might post it to this list, since I don't have a good
answer.  The question concerns job titles for writers and technical
vs. non-technical pay scales:

 >We write for engineering users.  Several years ago, technical
 >writers at our company were changed from technical pay scales to
 >non-technical when that change was made industry-wide.   Because we
 >document extremely technical information, we hire writers also have
 >computer science (or related) and engineering degrees or
 >experience.  Our company uses the same 4 writing titles for software
 >writers, marketing writers and proposal writers.
 >
 >I'm wondering if a new set of "more technical" titles that clearly
 >specified and recognized the technical skills could be classified as
 >belonging to the technical pay grades.  Maybe an "information
 >developer"  track would help, for example.
 >
 >Does anyone know of any precedents or have advice on titles that
 >would enable us to be classified as technical by the industry
standards?

Thanks
Rose Norman
Director of Business and Technical Writing
UAHuntsville
Huntsville, AL 35899
http://www.uah.edu/tc



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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:11:54 -0600
From: "BONNIE WEAVER" <Bonnie_Weaver at msn.com>
Subject: Re: [Stc-ac] question about job titles
To: "STC Academic SIG" <stc-ac at mailman.stc.org>
Message-ID: <BLU133-DAV6B88F7A5D369D3A11AACD894C0 at phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Dear Rose,
I will check with a few knowledgeable people and get back to you about this issue.

Sincerely yours,

Bonnie Weaver