I guess this is just a rant, but I gotta get it out somewhere and this seems like a good place to do it. I just graduated university and got a job as a tech writer for a mechanical engineering company. I’m 24 years old with a liberal arts degree in technical writing from the university of Connecticut, so my understanding of anything engineering-related is minimal. Because of that fact, I was pretty terrified when I got this job. However, all my friends and family assured me that there would be training protocols in place and that nothing would be asked of me before I had the proper tools and resources to learn.
Haha, that’s not what happened.
My position is completely autonomous in that there is only one technical writer for the entire company, and the last woman to do the job left months before I was hired. Ergo, I am COMPLETELY on my own here. The engineers are too busy to teach me anything, and my boss regularly cancels meetings due to her own busy schedule. I’ve been here for 6 months and I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water. I feel like I know nothing about the content I’m writing, in fact I essentially just get all the content from the engineers! I’m basically just a middle man that knows a lot about grammar. My boss keeps saying that she wants me to learn the ins-and-outs of the hardware we engineer, yet makes no move to help me nor push the engineers to help me.
Im just lost. This is my first real job, and everyday I sit down at my desk I feel useless.