What I Do

Sorry for the meager postings last week. I’ve actually kinda been busy at work lately (can you believe it? I’m actually WORKING instead of blogging! HA!) And I had to take a sick day on Friday because Maryn was sick. So at least I have some excuses, right?

Anyway, last week I “celebrated” my 2nd year of employment with Compuware Corporation. The reason I say “celebrated” is cause I wouldn’t really call my job something to really get all that excited about. At least what I do. The fact that I’m employed in Detroit with a good job is definitely something to celebrate, but the technical writing thing, not so much. I’m not trying to sound negative, I’m just keepin’ it real. My job is pretty boring. At times I wonder why I ever thought this might have sounded interesting when I chose it for my major in college.

I was a graphic design major when I first started at Ricks College in the Fall of 1992. I thought it sounded good because I loved art, and my Bishop in the Livonia Ward was one and encouraged me to do the same. After taking some fine art classes at Ricks however, I realized that I wasn’t as talented as some and I got cold feet. After a semester, it finally occurred to me that I always get excited when I’m enrolling in English classes and I usually get pretty good grades in them too. I switched my major to English. At Ricks, you really don’t have to get much more specific than that, so that’s what I ended up getting my Associates in.

When I got to USU post-mission, I had to kind of narrow it down a little. I considered teaching English at the high-school level. Then my counselor showed me how long it would take to graduate (like another 4 years), and my heart sank. I knew I would love it, but I did NOT want to be in school for another 4 years. He suggested Technical Communications (technical writing). The program was fairly new at USU, and was in demand in the job market. It would also only take me about 2 years to complete the degree. Sign me up!! I actually enjoyed many of my classes. It was at this time that “the Information Super Highway” was becoming more popular, and along with it web design and HTML. I really liked all of it. However, there was this other realm that was also getting a lot of buzz and there were many jobs out there for the taking. There were all of these big tekkie companies who were churning out all of these new, fancy products and they were in need of semi-literate people to explain how to use their stuff. Apparently the flip-flop wearing, software development engineers who like to work in complete isolation were having a hard time expressing themselves to people who didn’t speak “geek”, so that’s where technical writers were born. We’re the bridge between the nerds and real people.

I met my future roommate Jill in one of my HTML classes. Her prototype web-page was for Star Trek, which made me laugh. I’d never met a girl-trekkie before. She didn’t really plan on doing tech-writing for a living either. I think she just wanted to get out of school with a degree as quickly as possible like me. I remember her saying, “the day I actually DO tech writing, you’ll have to shoot me”. I laughed because I felt completely the same way. I figured it was like everyone said it was in the job world. Your degree had little to do with what you actually ended up doing. I guess we were both wrong because Jill got a sweet job offer from IBM at one of their recruiting fairs on campus right after graduation, and although it took me over a year, I ended up working for a contractor in Boise whose clients included HP and Microsoft. So much for what we thought.

I’ve since learned that once you start building your resume with a specific skillset, it’s really hard to start over. So that’s where Suzy, the tech writer, was born. And that’s why I can thank my lucky stars I have a job in this city. So in light of my recent 2 year-anniversary, I thought it might be appropriate to explain a little about what I do on a daily basis…when I’m not blogging that is.

Compuware manufactures high-end mainframe software solutions for major corporations and high-business companies. Think AT&T, Aetna, and Bank of America. Big companies with lots of data to organize, keep private, and store for the next million years. Our company creates solutions for them to do all of those things, plus some. And my job is to write the manuals for the software. Imagine for a moment, some lonely IT guy sitting on the 5th floor of AT&T headquarters who is trying to install the CD that came in the box from Compuware. What does he look for first? The Quick Reference or the Installation Guide, right? Bingo! Does that make sense? I do the writing, someone else does the developing, someone else does the testing before the CD gets shipped to the IT guy, and somebody else answers the phone calls for when the writing and the developing and testing don’t work. And all the other worker bees here at Compuware do the managing, sales & marketing (yo, Jeff!), and probably human resource stuff for the whole darn place. That’s at least how I see it (from cube #5046 on the 6th floor) anyway. I could be way off. It’s very possible in a company this big.

Anyway, they’ve been good to me. They have a sweet benefits package, and lots of amenities in the building. When I first started and found out that they had a daycare on the 2nd floor, I knew it was an answer to prayer. I also got a membership to the fitness center on the 2nd floor, and often dine in the Compuware Café. They even have a post office on the 3rd floor. It’s a home away from home, and a little city built inside glass. (So we don’t have walk around downtown Detroit). Like I said, it’s been a good place to work and I can’t complain. Except for the whole commuting and rush-hour thing, a manager who imposes unreasonable time-off guidelines, threats of lay-offs and acquisitions, and when I have to try and translate geek into normal English and my socio-phobe developer who smells like Thai food continues to avoid my emails. Then it gets a little dicey.