The Great Write Way, Chapter Two: Twice upon a time...
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
With ita and Robin on assuming "worry" is pejorative. I wonder what my children will grow up to be. I worry that they'll be axe murderers.
Is anybody around to help me wordsmith the intro to a resume? I haven't updated mine in far too long.
The idea I want to convey is that I love doing internal writing, where I influence the design as well as capture it. I keep missing the point. Here's the current draft.
Career Goal
Working closely with a sophisticated development team, capturing a design in English. I prefer to work as a Mercenary Analyst; see Jim Coplien's Organization Patterns for a longer discussion. [link]
Maybe you shouldn' thave, because I did your first post to be taking inventory and concluding worrying was in order. You were just wondering how much people had on their back burners, then?
Sheeeesh. I hesitate to discuss this, after re-reading that mess I posted. I went back to look, hoping you'd had an unfortunate copying-and-pasting accident, Susan. I can't even believe I posted that. Let's assume all three kids were talking to me while I was typing that paragraph, m'kay? So erm...what are we talking about...
It's getting to where I feel like I can't talk about minor worries that are threatening to become big ones to ask for help because it seems like everyone goes into crisis-mode when I use the "w" word, which makes me worry more than I was to start with and/or makes me feel like a freak. And I'm so not crippled by worry. Even when it was a much worse issue for me than it is now, it still never defined me. Not to myself, at least.
Look even at what you've posted here: minor worries that are threatening to become big ones to ask for help. Even though I now know you're talking about (which is what I would also call) wondering, that's not what the above reads like to me. It reads like: there's a problem, it looks like it is going to get bigger. Help me.
Ignore previous; here's the revision.
Capturing a sophisticated software design in English, working closely with the development team. As I see it, a software architecture is an idea. The designer/implementors are responsible for expressing that idea (or those ideas) as code; I express it/them as prose. See James Coplien's Organization Patterns for a longer discussion: [link]
I would like to lose the "a" in "a software architecture".
The rest looks good to me.
Heh, Betsy, I was just going to paste your quote from the link and say to use more of that language.
Betsy, I tend to prefer using a "Career Summary" to a "Career Goal" or "Objective." It's a subtle difference, but it makes the resume "here's what I offer you" instead of "here's what I want you to offer me." And I'm not sure I completely understand what it is you do, but my first draft at your Career Summary would look something like this:
"Writer expert at translating technical specifications of software architecture into clear English for a variety of audiences."
Actually, "for a variety of audiences", not so much. I'm shooting for "hire me to help develop your design, then explain it to technical people". Done end-user, done it well, bored now. I actually do want to say "here's what you offer me". Basically, here's what you should want to hire me; if you are put off, you don't want me and I don't want you.
Note that I write an entirely different resume when it's "I need a job badly now".
Thanks, guys.
And I don't think I quite use "worry" as a synonym for "wonder" or "think." I only use "worry" when the thinking/wondering is about a possible bad outcome (or lack of good outcome). But sometimes, maybe even most of the time, those worries are very, very mild things. It'd probably be better if I had fewer of them, sure, but they're just not big deals.
I actually do want to say "here's what you offer me".
Well, regardless of whether you're in the "I really need a job" phase or the "I want this and this only" one, I still think the resume is for "here's what I offer you" and the interview and post-offer negotiation process is the place for figuring out whether you like what they offer in return. JMHO, of course. Obviously you want a summary that's specific to what you're looking for, but I think resumes should be written from the perspective that the person on the receiving end of it only cares whether you can meet their needs, not the other way around.
But I already do stuff like this.
Then there's no problem, is there? But if you say "I worry I'm going to run out of ideas", I take you as meaning precisely that. It's about the word choice - I'm paying you the respect of taking the word as I understand it as what you're trying to say. And that's what I'm answering: why should you run out of ideas, since the big picture stuff (I like that phrase, and may have to steal it) is there and possible in any glance between two strangers?
edit: just realised, that reads as still rather cranky, and I'm not, actually. It's just late-night literal.
