{"id":264,"date":"2005-05-10T23:36:02","date_gmt":"2005-05-11T03:36:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/off_to_yahoo"},"modified":"2005-05-10T23:36:02","modified_gmt":"2005-05-11T03:36:02","slug":"off_to_yahoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2005\/05\/off_to_yahoo.html","title":{"rendered":"Off to Yahoo!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but in my defense, it’s been a busy month. Things have been hectic at work. There were taxes to pay. Weddings to attend. My wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. Actually, if I were to murder anything<\/em>, it would be the pigeons roosting in the eaves right over the stairs. I’ve poked at them with an extensible pole, but they keep coming back. I bought a plastic owl to scare them, but after about two days, the pigeons caught on. Wily, those pigeons. Noted animal control expert Tom Lehrer has some thoughts on the matter<\/a> that certainly deserve further analysis.<\/p>\n

The one piece of major news for the month is… drumroll… I’m changing jobs. I’ll be starting at Yahoo! in just a little under two weeks. I’ll be working for the Infrastructure group, helping to document internal software APIs and tools. Admittedly, this probably doesn’t sound as interesting to you as it does to me<\/em>, but let’s face it: the life of a technical writer isn’t exactly about the glamour, baby. Oh, sure, the kids keep coming to me with stars in their eyes… and I keep having to break it to them that despite what they’ve seen on TV, technical writing isn’t all gold chains and supermodels and champagne and “Tech Pubs Emergencies!” that send you winging off to Amsterdam at a moment’s notice. The truth is that it’s hard work<\/em>, kiddo, and don’t let anyone tell you different. <\/p>\n

At Chordiant<\/a> I was fortunate to have consistently excellent colleagues in both Tech Pubs and Engineering. And let’s face it, good relationships with your colleagues are make-or-break for a writer. Engineering is a little different in this respect — the proverbial “lone genius” engineer can, in certain situations,[1<\/a>]<\/sup> be marginally effective. Not so for tech writers. If all your Subject Matter Experts dislike you, nothing else matters. You’re screwed. So as I leave my comfy, well-established tech writing department, I can’t help feeling a smidge<\/em> of trepidation mixed in with all the excitement and happy thoughts. The group we’re building is pretty new, and so we’d better be strong right out of the gate. Let’s hope my new colleagues don’t find out that I’ve been out-clevered by the pigeons.<\/p>\n

One last note: as some of you might know, Yahoo! has a number of<\/a> prominent<\/a> bloggers<\/a>. So far it hasn’t been my style to write much about work, and so I probably won’t turn into a “Yahoo! blogger” as such. It’s possible<\/em>, but unlikely. The one thing I can promise is that I will attempt to post more frequently. Whether it’s storymapping<\/a>, markup shenanigans<\/a>, or delicious mojito recipes<\/a>, I’m your man.<\/p>\n

<\/a>1. And for certain values of “genius”.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Admittedly, this probably doesn’t sound as interesting to you as it does to me<\/em>, but let’s face it: the life of a technical writer isn’t exactly about the glamour, baby. Oh, sure, the kids keep coming to me with stars in their eyes… and I keep having to break it to them that despite what they’ve seen on TV, technical writing isn’t all gold chains and supermodels and champagne and “Tech Pubs Emergencies!” that send you winging off to Amsterdam at a moment’s notice. The truth is that it’s hard work<\/em>, kiddo, and don’t let anyone tell you different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}