Somebody asked a question on Writers about batch-converting document reference numbers (like ISBNs but for papers, not just books) to full citations, which sounded like a "simple matter of programming web services", so I did a little poking around. I have a (single) peer-reviewed publication, so I looked up its reference number (DOI) to test with ( Read more... )

Part of this meme:
LISP
The most valuable part of my education as a technical writer was my ( Read more... )

From this job posting for an API Technical Writer (sic):

"Our ideal candidate [...] Comfortable authoring in HTML and XML using plain-text editors (no WYSIWYG)"

That's how I work all the time. I didn't know anybody else cared. :-)

(Because (1) after 30+ years the emacs muscle-memory is strong; (2) it means I actually know the spec (at least the ( Read more... )

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Someone on a tech-writing mailing list today asked the following: "As a hiring manager, what are you looking for in a resume? Do you think hiring managers with a technical writing background look for different things than one that is just getting to employee their first technical writer?" I want to record my response here:
I am a software ( Read more... )

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A friend recently posted (in a locked entry) about an amusing experience he had on a job-interview trip. It reminded me of something that happened on my first day-long interview. (For some reason this style of interview was then called a "plant trip". Or maybe that only described the subset of such where they had to fly you in; not sure. I ( Read more... )

( SCA, career, games, judaism )

gregbo linked to an article about why it's hard to keep senior developers doing development. The author asserts that no self-respecting developer started his career thinking "I want to be a manager!", but the natural progression is toward technical leadership, management, or both. This progression is captured, somewhat cynically, as the Peter Principle ( Read more... )