Keep the crappy job---until you deal with these: pay off your debts, analyze whether you are getting full enjoyment off the giant expenses (get rid of them might be an option), and job hunt like crazy. CRAZY!
Don't be naughty at work, most career fields are like a small town, you will definitely run into people you hurt again. (I cannot believe how people can be so sweetly vicious or fire people in horrid ways and positive they'll never run into their victims again. )
I've seen friends keep crappy jobs and keep digging their debt-hole deeper and deeper, so they are nuthin-but a prison-beetch to some monster at work.
One friend keeps buying more and more knick-knack crap for her house, new car, new house, clothes, working 60-70 hour weeks, getting really badly outa shape, getting screamed at by the foreign boss, with the offshore group members panting for her job.
Freeze your credit cards in a block of ice. Start making your lunch, and calling headhunters to do lunch with.
While you are killing time at the crappy job, see if you can schmooze over to a decent team and build up some positive references, or a better job.
Lately, because of the hard times, I've seen more and more fake consultant technical writers show up at my contract gigs.
Most of the corporations and headhunters have no idea how to evaluate technical writers, so they don't bother. They'd slaughter a Fake programmer, but as long as the fake writer isn't peeing in the coffeemaker, it's fabulous. Then the bosses won't admit they hired a bad one, and pretend he's great. The rest of us have to hunt down all the problems or we get punished. And provide free training to this, essentially, thief.
This hurts the tech writing profession, as people think we're all sniveling, incompetent idiots and liars. It hurts the company, because the content: manuals, internet/intranet, training materials can look shabby, not work, be really crappy and make the company look incompetent.
Almost no corporations or headhunters do skills tests. If you even talk about it, they just ignore it, saying "Well, that's great, can you just send me your resume?"
It's soooo easy to create a Fake Portfolio and Fake references from friends. This is ALL that corporations and headhunters look at. I've even been fooled by these, only to find that the "writer" could not do the work, or was obsessed with becoming a Fake manager, booking tons of useless meetings per week, schmoozing and delegating their work to others.
Look, it's amazing to see corporations who right-size constantly, keep on a fake consultant who's good at manipulation, while getting rid of the ones who do the actual work and cover for these creeps.
I've given some Tech writing skills test tips in my Slash journal...
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Keep the crappy job---until you deal with these: pay off your debts, analyze whether you are getting full enjoyment off the giant expenses (get rid of them might be an option), and job hunt like crazy. CRAZY! Don't be naughty at work, most career fields are like a small town, you will definitely run into people you hurt again. (I cannot believe how people can be so sweetly vicious or fire people in horrid ways and positive they'll never run into their victims again. ) I've seen friends keep crappy jobs and keep digging their debt-hole deeper and deeper, so they are nuthin-but a prison-beetch to some monster at work. One friend keeps buying more and more knick-knack crap for her house, new car, new house, clothes, working 60-70 hour weeks, getting really badly outa shape, getting screamed at by the foreign boss, with the offshore group members panting for her job. Freeze your credit cards in a block of ice. Start making your lunch, and calling headhunters to do lunch with. While you are killing time at the crappy job, see if you can schmooze over to a decent team and build up some positive references, or a better job.
Lately, because of the hard times, I've seen more and more fake consultant technical writers show up at my contract gigs.
Most of the corporations and headhunters have no idea how to evaluate technical writers, so they don't bother. They'd slaughter a Fake programmer, but as long as the fake writer isn't peeing in the coffeemaker, it's fabulous.
Then the bosses won't admit they hired a bad one, and pretend he's great. The rest of us have to hunt down all the problems or we get punished. And provide free training to this, essentially, thief.
This hurts the tech writing profession, as people think we're all sniveling, incompetent idiots and liars. It hurts the company, because the content: manuals, internet/intranet, training materials can look shabby, not work, be really crappy and make the company look incompetent.
Almost no corporations or headhunters do skills tests. If you even talk about it, they just ignore it, saying "Well, that's great, can you just send me your resume?"
It's soooo easy to create a Fake Portfolio and Fake references from friends. This is ALL that corporations and headhunters look at. I've even been fooled by these, only to find that the "writer" could not do the work, or was obsessed with becoming a Fake manager, booking tons of useless meetings per week, schmoozing and delegating their work to others.
Look, it's amazing to see corporations who right-size constantly, keep on a fake consultant who's good at manipulation, while getting rid of the ones who do the actual work and cover for these creeps.
I've given some Tech writing skills test tips in my Slash journal...