Hi! I don't think that this advice is useful only for New Zealand...
Knowing FM will help you get your foot in the door. In the Silicon Valley, demand for tech writers is ramping up. My years of experience suggest to me that tech writing departments will now be *desperate* for writers. They'll be choosing candidates who can contribute immediately. That may mean that experienced FM users get first crack at the jobs. *Learning* FM helped me learn about the book-writing process. Even unstructured FM will help you learn standards, consistency, and organization, especially if you have to write your own templates. Structured FM really helps you learn an organized approach to information organization. It also helps you learn XML if you're not familiar with it. I could *use* Word before I learned FM, but afterwards I knew more about what Word was all about. Once you learn FM, you can figure out how to do the same stuff in Word. IMHO, Word is not a great tool for technical writing; still, you will run into it. If you know Word, you'll be a hero in your company even if they don't use it for tech writing. Overall, though, learning *how to organize information* made me a tech writer. Grammar and rhetoric skills don't do much if you can't put the information in a place where the reader can find it, and produce an overall group of topics that make the product clear. Joe Malin Technical Writer (408)625-1623 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.tuvox.com The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not necessarily reflect those of TuVox, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of rebecca officer Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2006 3:14 PM To: Framers@frameusers.com; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Career advice--which application to focus on: FM or Word? If you were looking for work in New Zealand, you'd be in one of two situations: - working in a tech writing team with a company or consultancy. In that case, the tool is pretty irrelevant. In our company, we take people who've never seen FM before and get them competent within a week or two. What matters to us is the ability to write clearly about complex technical material. If you've got the kind of mind that can cope with high-end internet switches, learning FM is a breeze! - working by yourself in a small company. The problem there is that you don't have anyone to learn the tool from, so lack of tool knowledge can drive you batty. And the tool is most likely to be Word. So in NZ, I'd advise someone to focus on the position and work - especially to look for something with variety and the potential to rise further - but also to try and come to grips with Word enough that you can competently produce a template-based book from it. Cheers, Rebecca >>> "Andy Kelsall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12/05/06 03:39 >>> Hello everyone, I would like some advice from anyone who has worked in the technical writing field for more than 3 years. My question is this: If you knew someone who was looking to enter the technical writing field at this time, would you advise them to seek out positions where they would be using FrameMaker, or would you tell them not to worry so much on which application would be used, but instead focus on the position and the work itself? The reason I ask is that on various listservs I subscribe to, it seems that most people are big FM advocates and are not too fond of Word. I've spent the last month trying to learn the basics of FM, and I can see why people choose FM over Word when it comes to serious technical writing. Granted, there is a steep learning curve, but it *is* a lot more versatile than Word. I'm moving away from a 17 year career as a technician and engineer in the telecom field and I want to make sure my first step into technical writing isn't a misstep. As a quick note, I have given the career change quite a bit of thought, and went as far as completing a technical writing program at Duke. Any and all advice is appreciated. Thanks, Andy _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.