October 2007 Job Site Excursion

by Kyle Johnson, Texas Tech University student

The “Job Site Excursion” (JSE) this year was an absolute joy to attend, the Lone Star Community’s boundless hospitality really set the stage for a wonderful and informative evening. Portfolios are tricky things, and we make them for almost every class, but discussing the real world application of them, and how to sell ourselves as individuals, really brought to light how important they are. Meeting the members of the LSC also provided great networking opportunities. We gleaned some first-hand information from people who had recently graduated with our same specialty and are now in the business world. There was a wide range of personalities for every member from our student chapter to gravitate toward. Every student had a favorite LSC moment to talk about on the way home.

Our visit to ADX the next day was incredibly interesting. They are a small firm and made us feel right at home and were very approachable. The company has a very special niche market and is constantly expanding. At ADX we got to see first hand how a lone technical writer works at a company, and the truth is rather daunting. Luckily the company is looking at expanding its employment of technical writers into each of the smaller internal departments to further expand and compete.

Later we visited T-Mobile and were slightly shocked at what we saw. We began with a discussion with a knowledge management architect and an engineering manager. Soon after, we toured the Network Operations Center where technicians maintain network service for the wireless telephone customers (across the central United States) and worldwide for the T-Mobile HotSpot (wireless Internet) customers. Though fascinating, it was beyond the scope of many of our ideas about technical writing professions.

Our final stop on our JSE trip was at CA, formerly Computer Associates. This was certainly the most impressive of the three companies in terms of the size and scope of their technical writing department. Our discussions there provided many insights into technical writing as a profession, job description, job security, introductory pay, advancement in the work place, and much more. If one wanted to live in the Dallas area and work as a technical writer, it seemed from this job site excursion that CA would be a good, albeit less personable, fit.