Unlike most posts, which I leave alone after publication except for occasionally making minor fixes to obvious mistakes, I plan to keep this updated. I began thinking about this in February 2012 and created it in March, but eventually (sooner or later, hopefully, maybe) this will flow seamlessly as if it has always been here.
| Term | Meaning | How it affects me | Other notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| the doomed project | A project my agency is working on which has had a process so messed up it's unrecognizable, is mismanaged at almost every level (I have very few complaints about the RDM, but other than that), was probably a bad idea from the start, and as of March 2012 is three months past its deadline with at least three months to go. | I'm the lead tech writer on this - most projects just have one at a time, but this is big enough that I have regular help from J., another writer - and it takes up most of my time. I don't actually mind too much because my supervisors are understanding about what's reasonable and possible so I very rarely have to worry about it. | It's not the blind leading the blind, it's the blind leading the stupid down a badly marked trail over a cliff created by industrial erosion, and when we hit bottom the EMTs who finally find us will be drunk and treat us with homeopathy. |
| RDO | Short for "regular day off". One of the perks of my job. I work nine-hour days most days, and that adds up to one day off every other week while still working 40 hours per week on average. | I move my RDOs around relatively freely to coordinate my three-day weekends with my girlfriend's or turn a holiday weekend into a four-day weekend or whatever. Not sure if my boss approves, but she hasn't complained so far. | Similar to flextime. If there's any difference between RDOs and flextime at all, it's that RDOs are supposed to be, well, regular, but like I said, I get away with changing it somewhat. I'm pretty consistent about keeping them on the first day of the week, though. |
| RDM | Short for regulatory development manager. These are the people in charge of individual rulemaking projects. They call most meetings and are the team members who are most responsible for hitting each step of the regulatory process. | In theory, these are the people I work closest to and follow instructions directly from. Whenever a project gets bogged down, though, there's not much they can do, so documents tend to go back and forth between all other team members. | This seems to be the main career advancement opportunity for me - I know one RDM here who used to be a tech writer, and two former tech writers who are now RDMs at different agencies - but judging by what I see of it, I wouldn't take the job at twice my current salary. |
| SME | Short for subject matter expert. These are the experts on various sub-domains of regulation. Engineers who know all about the design and use of certain types of electrical systems, security consultants, representatives of regional offices who are trying to get their preferred policy turned into a mandatory regulation, et cetera. Most are career government employees, but I think some may be contractors like me. | My relationship with them is pretty straightforward: they tell me what to do with rulemaking documents or feedback on them, and I do it. I may rephrase things later on or right in front of them because these are generally the people most in need of writing help, but 90 percent of the changes I make to their work are nonsubstantive issues of rewording or reformatting things, and the remaining 10 percent aren't at my discretion, they're just me noticing things that I think look wrong and calling it to the attention of someone who would know. | In theory the relationship between me and the SMEs is supposed to be more complicated, but in day-to-day work, who cares. See also RDM. |
| tech writer | My job. There's very little actual writing involved. Instead, I revise and edit other peoples' work for readability and formatting, I make changes to documents as requested by people less competent with Microsoft Office suite than I am, I represent the layman in esoteric discussions, I take notes at meetings when I feel like it. | My relationship with other tech writers can be odd sometimes. They're my peers, and my desk is in the same room with most of them, but that's it. We fill in for each other when we have scheduling conflicts, and several kinds of documents are supposed to be peer reviewed, but none of us work together on a regular basis. | See the blog title. |
| TMBB | Short for "team members' bosses' bosses." A TMBB is someone two layers of management up from the SMEs or RDMs I work with. | On a normal project I never see or talk to these people except for passing them in the hall, but the doomed project is not normal. I actually get a bit intimidated by them sometimes just because they're so high above me on the totem pole. | |
| WMBD boss | Short for "well-meaning but dumb". This guy is TMBB to all RDMs. He is Dilbert's pointy-haired boss without the pointy hair or deliberate malice: bald on top, tall and slightly overweight, a particularly bad public speaker and communicator, and prone to rescheduling events at the last minute, requiring impossible project schedules, and generally making things worse. | He's not quite detestable because his bad management seems thoughtless rather than deliberate, and/or caused by being caught between a rock and a hard place himself. I still find him hard to like, though. |
