Cautiously Optimistic
Jun. 29th, 2005 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smofbabeEncouraging news from my 2 a.m. staff meeting: my manager was at a two-day managers meeting and says there was no indication that any major upheavals are planned. The Usurper did say that all new personnel reqs would be for non-US locations only for the foreseeable future. He also mentioned that Sun has offices in four time zones and that they wanted to have more coverage. (At which point I said "It's 2:30 in the morning here" and got a laugh.) Regarding editorial coverage in India, one of the editors managing contract editors for the training group in Colorado heard that one of their contract editors is moving to Bangalore so my manager is going to talk to her this week.
Not coming from the managers meeting but still of interest was that a month or two ago, my manager got a note from the doc manager who is in charge of the doc managers in India saying that one of the writers there wanted to transition to being an editor. My manager asked for my input as I'd met everyone there. The writer in question had lived in the US for a couple of years and while his English skills were good enough for him to work for a local community newspaper, I had seen his technical stuff and noticed organizational and some language issues (e.g., intros to lists not matching the list items grammatically). I also pointed out that even if we were to encourage him to become an editor, we still wouldn't give a junior editor the docs coming from the Bangalore writers as they would be in worse shape than usual, given that the writers there are both unfamiliar with our style and not as skilled in English.
Lo and behold, my manager said this morning that the last he'd heard of this had been his passing along these comments. Imagine his surprise when yesterday afternoon he got email from the doc manager saying that this writer had started transitioning to an editorial role! First of all, we have a centralized editorial staff so how they could make such a decision without consulting my manager further is a mystery. Also mysterious is how this transition is happening given that the writer has not been in touch with any of the more experienced editors or asked for any mentoring - did he just wake up one morning and decide he was an editor now? Nice trick!
Australian cultural note: I ordered risotto the other night and was surprised when I saw that it had a tomato base. Stephen was equally surprised that there were places where risotto *doesn't* have a tomato base!
Not coming from the managers meeting but still of interest was that a month or two ago, my manager got a note from the doc manager who is in charge of the doc managers in India saying that one of the writers there wanted to transition to being an editor. My manager asked for my input as I'd met everyone there. The writer in question had lived in the US for a couple of years and while his English skills were good enough for him to work for a local community newspaper, I had seen his technical stuff and noticed organizational and some language issues (e.g., intros to lists not matching the list items grammatically). I also pointed out that even if we were to encourage him to become an editor, we still wouldn't give a junior editor the docs coming from the Bangalore writers as they would be in worse shape than usual, given that the writers there are both unfamiliar with our style and not as skilled in English.
Lo and behold, my manager said this morning that the last he'd heard of this had been his passing along these comments. Imagine his surprise when yesterday afternoon he got email from the doc manager saying that this writer had started transitioning to an editorial role! First of all, we have a centralized editorial staff so how they could make such a decision without consulting my manager further is a mystery. Also mysterious is how this transition is happening given that the writer has not been in touch with any of the more experienced editors or asked for any mentoring - did he just wake up one morning and decide he was an editor now? Nice trick!
Australian cultural note: I ordered risotto the other night and was surprised when I saw that it had a tomato base. Stephen was equally surprised that there were places where risotto *doesn't* have a tomato base!
