What do I do again?
Dec. 12th, 2000 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupMy job involves taking a blue pen to printed copy. An editor. Except that at my company the "editors" are people who look at "content" after the "content developers," who massage "content" from "authors." For some reason "editors" there are not so much editors as formatters and people who somehow transmogrify a chapter into "content." Personally I do not think that the end result of these efforts is a better product. When I was a "content developer" I had a chapter of mine rewritten and somehow the editor rewrote a line I had about the Mexican-American War to say that "this was the most important event of the 19th century." Too many cooks spoil the broth.
Anyway, my job for now is to control the quality of the final product. The howler above was caught by someone doing my job, which is how I know about it. So we often rewrite things. Indeed, we often rewrite things a great deal, covering pages of material people thought were "finished" with rivers of ink. Pointing out missing commas. Pointing out places where "which" should be "that" and other nitpicking things. Getting rid of the passive voice. Such minor things make it easy to minimize my job, but in fact what we most often do is to either say, "no student will understand this, it is awful," or "this is written very, very badly but it is somewhat comprehensible. Perhaps it could be better if..."
I have worked enough on my own writing to know how this happens. You look at your own words and play with them for long enough and after a while you lose all ability to write crisply and elegantly. So my department feels that we do a very valuable service for a new company that needs its content to look good if we are going to compete against textbooks that do not require cleaning your browser cache to read. However, my sense is that our nitpicking is not universally loved. People talk about my department like we were the gestapo. This is particularly frustrating when I know that the "editors" change things around so much in the belief that if they don't my department will cover things with ink. Of course, we do anyway, but it is my belief that there would be an equal number if not fewer comments if we got it without them touching it at all.
Anyway for the last 2 weeks I was working until 9 pm every night doing that and link-checking, which is basically looking at everything to make sure it works. An astonishing amount of stuff doesn't work, particularly on Netscape, which no one uses anymore, but which we have to program for anyway. Anyway everyone else waited to get their stuff in until right before or just after the deadline. So for months I had little to do (at least in this position); working late was the payback.
It was not so bad as all that. I do like the people I work with, and there's a healthy dose of cynicism in the place that makes it easier to take. My boss is a pretty funny guy and I can't say that there has been any of the toilet licking associated with 99% of the jobs in the world. My big worry is that it's much less certain than academia (that is, if you get a job in academia). The company's fortunes are tied to the market, which is not such a great place right now.
I would say more but you never know who reads these things. Not that the CEO would read this or something. But I am paranoid.
Anyway, in the past week I have found a new mini-mania. We had some downtime last week and I started playing Yahoo chess. Getting good at chess has always been one of my "lifetime goals," and it's free, unlike buying a guitar. So far I have not done as badly as I'd thought, though at first I was unfamiliar with playing in 2d. Also I learned that jerks like to do things like Fool's Mate and zooming in with the queen to take your corner rook and all that. So after a while I learned how to counter those things and now I'm beating people who play those tricks pretty consistently, cause if they don't work you fall behind. I am still pretty lousy-- I got beaten by a 12 year old and an 11 year old in the same day-- but I am slowly improving, which is a satisfying feeling. (It is also more socially acceptable to be a good chess player than, say, a good Age of Empires player.)
I still worry about stuff a lot. I think I have pretty much decided to just pocket my landlady's checks and have that be the end of it, because it would cost money to fight and I haven't called a law office or anything yet; the whole thing is pretty stale by now. I mostly feel restless, though I'm so busy. I need a good book or something. I finally finished Camus' "The Plague" and now I can't find anything to read.
Anyway, my job for now is to control the quality of the final product. The howler above was caught by someone doing my job, which is how I know about it. So we often rewrite things. Indeed, we often rewrite things a great deal, covering pages of material people thought were "finished" with rivers of ink. Pointing out missing commas. Pointing out places where "which" should be "that" and other nitpicking things. Getting rid of the passive voice. Such minor things make it easy to minimize my job, but in fact what we most often do is to either say, "no student will understand this, it is awful," or "this is written very, very badly but it is somewhat comprehensible. Perhaps it could be better if..."
I have worked enough on my own writing to know how this happens. You look at your own words and play with them for long enough and after a while you lose all ability to write crisply and elegantly. So my department feels that we do a very valuable service for a new company that needs its content to look good if we are going to compete against textbooks that do not require cleaning your browser cache to read. However, my sense is that our nitpicking is not universally loved. People talk about my department like we were the gestapo. This is particularly frustrating when I know that the "editors" change things around so much in the belief that if they don't my department will cover things with ink. Of course, we do anyway, but it is my belief that there would be an equal number if not fewer comments if we got it without them touching it at all.
Anyway for the last 2 weeks I was working until 9 pm every night doing that and link-checking, which is basically looking at everything to make sure it works. An astonishing amount of stuff doesn't work, particularly on Netscape, which no one uses anymore, but which we have to program for anyway. Anyway everyone else waited to get their stuff in until right before or just after the deadline. So for months I had little to do (at least in this position); working late was the payback.
It was not so bad as all that. I do like the people I work with, and there's a healthy dose of cynicism in the place that makes it easier to take. My boss is a pretty funny guy and I can't say that there has been any of the toilet licking associated with 99% of the jobs in the world. My big worry is that it's much less certain than academia (that is, if you get a job in academia). The company's fortunes are tied to the market, which is not such a great place right now.
I would say more but you never know who reads these things. Not that the CEO would read this or something. But I am paranoid.
Anyway, in the past week I have found a new mini-mania. We had some downtime last week and I started playing Yahoo chess. Getting good at chess has always been one of my "lifetime goals," and it's free, unlike buying a guitar. So far I have not done as badly as I'd thought, though at first I was unfamiliar with playing in 2d. Also I learned that jerks like to do things like Fool's Mate and zooming in with the queen to take your corner rook and all that. So after a while I learned how to counter those things and now I'm beating people who play those tricks pretty consistently, cause if they don't work you fall behind. I am still pretty lousy-- I got beaten by a 12 year old and an 11 year old in the same day-- but I am slowly improving, which is a satisfying feeling. (It is also more socially acceptable to be a good chess player than, say, a good Age of Empires player.)
I still worry about stuff a lot. I think I have pretty much decided to just pocket my landlady's checks and have that be the end of it, because it would cost money to fight and I haven't called a law office or anything yet; the whole thing is pretty stale by now. I mostly feel restless, though I'm so busy. I need a good book or something. I finally finished Camus' "The Plague" and now I can't find anything to read.
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Good Move
Date: 2000-12-12 11:10 pm (UTC)Your job sounds kind of fun, actually. But I don't know what you mean by, "no one uses [Netscape] anymore." 50% of the hits on my webpage are by Netscape, the other 50% are usually something called "Mozilla" or "Mozilla 4.74" which is just another way of saying "Netscape", I think. Who is this that isn't using Netscape? What alternative is there. Explorer? What are people using if not Netscape? What are you using?
Re: Good Move
Date: 2000-12-13 05:59 am (UTC)Really. I use a Mac. I dislike Microsoft. But stuff does not work as well on Netscape because everyone programs now for IE. And Netscape doesn't have a "history" drop down menu, which I find essential.
I don't use Netscape. Ergo no one uses Netscape. Q.E. friggin' D.!!