Pretty sure I wouldn't have any mates if I drank shandy.
Fuck Israel
just finished my overtime backlog for this week (it's 11:30pm). paid 1x rate, too, d'oh.
turns out losing 3-4 editors during a pandemic and having no means to recruit and meaningfully train their replacements is not good.
turns out losing 3-4 editors during a pandemic and having no means to recruit and meaningfully train their replacements is not good.
- Superior Mind
- (not macbeth)
- +1,755|6950
Are you an editor also? Are you basically reading all day at work?
If so, that's a good job and you must be well read.
If so, that's a good job and you must be well read.
Last edited by Superior Mind (2020-10-29 16:44:01)
yes i've been in publishing for most of the last decade, did the usual internship + bottom rung in editorial thing and worked my way up.
spent a few years in book publishing, which was far more interesting for general reading and for meeting colourful authors (or plain eccentrics, really). worked at two houses and did a spread of politics, history and general non-fiction. the book world is probably the most stereotypical image of the 'editor' you'll still find today (assuming you're not thinking of newspaper or magazine editors; quite a different job). i've got lots of good anecdotes and a fount of useless trivia and knowledge, yep. all the images of liquid lunches, boozy book launches, author tantrums, etc, are all pretty much true. it's an old profession and the rituals are in place. i did some improbably barmy things during my time, like becoming the editor of the current count tolstoy. basically a caricature of an old world european aristocrat. and a nightmare to work with. worked with ina garten's husband. worked with hipster author chuck klosterman (pretty sure his book i signed to our uk imprint is still one of their steady bestsellers).
moved into academic publishing 2-3 years ago. i'm actually in the sciences. physics and medical research, mostly, working for a learned society/not-for-profit. the reading is admittedly a lot less interesting in a general sense but the job is less taxing and pays a lot more. book publishing runs on the fumes of glamour and typically eats up young, eager people in hubs like new york and london. one either makes an accommodation with being fashionably impoverished or one goes freelance, moves out, manoeuvres sideways, etc.
i told myself i'd go into science publishing so that i could focus more on my own spare-time reading/research. i still want to do a PhD at some point; i'll be one of those 30-something grad school people. i'll probably have to go fully freelance though before that's realistically possible. not very easy to get together a research proposal and large annotated bibliography when working until 11.30 pm at night.
i've read and published a lot of stuff on covid-19 during this year. that's been neat. published some cool global news stories, like the first photo of a black hole. worked with some nobel prize winners and some world-famous scientists. been berated by a few notable quantum physicists in that editor-author way, too. all good fun.
uzi's life story. be gentle, dear readers.
spent a few years in book publishing, which was far more interesting for general reading and for meeting colourful authors (or plain eccentrics, really). worked at two houses and did a spread of politics, history and general non-fiction. the book world is probably the most stereotypical image of the 'editor' you'll still find today (assuming you're not thinking of newspaper or magazine editors; quite a different job). i've got lots of good anecdotes and a fount of useless trivia and knowledge, yep. all the images of liquid lunches, boozy book launches, author tantrums, etc, are all pretty much true. it's an old profession and the rituals are in place. i did some improbably barmy things during my time, like becoming the editor of the current count tolstoy. basically a caricature of an old world european aristocrat. and a nightmare to work with. worked with ina garten's husband. worked with hipster author chuck klosterman (pretty sure his book i signed to our uk imprint is still one of their steady bestsellers).
moved into academic publishing 2-3 years ago. i'm actually in the sciences. physics and medical research, mostly, working for a learned society/not-for-profit. the reading is admittedly a lot less interesting in a general sense but the job is less taxing and pays a lot more. book publishing runs on the fumes of glamour and typically eats up young, eager people in hubs like new york and london. one either makes an accommodation with being fashionably impoverished or one goes freelance, moves out, manoeuvres sideways, etc.
i told myself i'd go into science publishing so that i could focus more on my own spare-time reading/research. i still want to do a PhD at some point; i'll be one of those 30-something grad school people. i'll probably have to go fully freelance though before that's realistically possible. not very easy to get together a research proposal and large annotated bibliography when working until 11.30 pm at night.
i've read and published a lot of stuff on covid-19 during this year. that's been neat. published some cool global news stories, like the first photo of a black hole. worked with some nobel prize winners and some world-famous scientists. been berated by a few notable quantum physicists in that editor-author way, too. all good fun.
uzi's life story. be gentle, dear readers.
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-29 17:19:14)
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +642|3977
So I was right. You really are a publisher of the gay sciences.Uzique wrote:
moved into academic publishing 2-3 years ago. i'm actually in the sciences.
that's a book by nietzsche i'll have you know.
they don't call them 'hard sciences' for nothing. ask dilbert. evidently he's still sore.
they don't call them 'hard sciences' for nothing. ask dilbert. evidently he's still sore.
I had my first serious thought of quitting today. Earlier this year my job was being someone who writes investigations, reviews documentation, acts as a SME on multifunctional teams, and just random problem solving. After the reorganization, my responsibilities basically became only the first part with writing investigations. It's not only big, thorough investigations, but a bunch of tedious little shit that is basically busywork we used to offload on new people as a low-risk way of familiarizing them with the system we use. Also, it's now just me and another person, whereas that workload was previously 6 of us. AND my department merged with another one (which has a reputation of being a bit of a shitshow), so it's all of their work, too, and they've not been shy about having stupid fucking problems that require investigation. The problem is I know basically nothing about that area, so I have more work than ever before, and a lot of it is about things I am unfamiliar with.
Additionally, this reorganization changed a bunch of peoples responsibilities across the site, so the usual engineers and support people to contact probably aren't acting in that role anymore, so I have to explain matters I can't intelligently discuss to strangers who are also newly learning what they are to do. I got moved under a new director who happened to quit shortly after we were moved under him. A lot of the similar people in my old position did get a raise from it, but I didn't because my raises and years put in already had me there, so there's not even a larger incentive for me (and others are pissed off because now both the best and shittiest writers make basically the same).
Furthermore, the company hired some outside consultant to look at our investigations and did a piss-poor job of communicating it (to the point that I asked my boss one day who these new people in the meeting were). I have a draft that has already been a ball-ache and needs to close so our global partners can release material that I sent to the consultant today. It was returned with so much unnecessary shifting of words and, frankly, incorrect grammatical notes that immediately pissed me off and doesn't bode well for the future. I had a call to try and clarify and this person basically doesn't realize paragraphs exist and seems to only want simple sentences that stand alone. There were comments asking questions on the Word doc that were literally answered in the very next sentence, or multiple sentences building on each other in a paragraph to hammer home a point. I've been changing it just to push it through the ringer and get it done, but I am less than enthused by the experience.
One of the things I always liked was the novel and varied experiences about my job. I don't want to be chained to a desk writing all day.
Additionally, this reorganization changed a bunch of peoples responsibilities across the site, so the usual engineers and support people to contact probably aren't acting in that role anymore, so I have to explain matters I can't intelligently discuss to strangers who are also newly learning what they are to do. I got moved under a new director who happened to quit shortly after we were moved under him. A lot of the similar people in my old position did get a raise from it, but I didn't because my raises and years put in already had me there, so there's not even a larger incentive for me (and others are pissed off because now both the best and shittiest writers make basically the same).
Furthermore, the company hired some outside consultant to look at our investigations and did a piss-poor job of communicating it (to the point that I asked my boss one day who these new people in the meeting were). I have a draft that has already been a ball-ache and needs to close so our global partners can release material that I sent to the consultant today. It was returned with so much unnecessary shifting of words and, frankly, incorrect grammatical notes that immediately pissed me off and doesn't bode well for the future. I had a call to try and clarify and this person basically doesn't realize paragraphs exist and seems to only want simple sentences that stand alone. There were comments asking questions on the Word doc that were literally answered in the very next sentence, or multiple sentences building on each other in a paragraph to hammer home a point. I've been changing it just to push it through the ringer and get it done, but I am less than enthused by the experience.
One of the things I always liked was the novel and varied experiences about my job. I don't want to be chained to a desk writing all day.
Last edited by DesertFox- (2020-10-30 07:41:44)
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +642|3977
You are still young enough to go back to dental school.
that indeed sounds like a clusterfuck.
- SuperJail Warden
- Gone Forever
- +642|3977
I read a bunch of Nietzsche in college.uziq wrote:
that's a book by nietzsche i'll have you know.
they don't call them 'hard sciences' for nothing. ask dilbert. evidently he's still sore.
nietzsche is actually pretty easy to read, gay science and earlier texts particularly. very concise and clever stuff.
kant or hegel or husserl or derrida or lacan or kittler ... okay, meme.gif applies.
kant or hegel or husserl or derrida or lacan or kittler ... okay, meme.gif applies.
I'm not sore, I'm glad you're no longer wasting your life.uziq wrote:
that's a book by nietzsche i'll have you know.
they don't call them 'hard sciences' for nothing. ask dilbert. evidently he's still sore.
Fuck Israel
when was i 'wasting' my life? haha. i've never been unemployed or even under-employed.
No but in something useful which people are interested in.
Fuck Israel
i published history books for a general audience. copies sold in the 10,000s (good numbers for any nonfic book in today's market).
i think you should learn to speak for yourself. it's an important adjustment for anyone typically over age 16. your weird ingrown prejudices are not shared by the world.
besides, haven't you yourself mentioned reading lots of ww2 books and spy-espionage books, etc? do you have any idea how many of those i published and worked on? where do you think all of those endless books come from, dipshit?
i think you should learn to speak for yourself. it's an important adjustment for anyone typically over age 16. your weird ingrown prejudices are not shared by the world.
besides, haven't you yourself mentioned reading lots of ww2 books and spy-espionage books, etc? do you have any idea how many of those i published and worked on? where do you think all of those endless books come from, dipshit?
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-30 06:10:18)
I think I've read one history of espionage book.
You know espionage is the french word for spying right?
You know espionage is the french word for spying right?
Fuck Israel
it's a genre in trade publishing.
https://www.waterstones.com/category/cr … -thrillers
thanks though i had no idea! you are the smartest boy ever!
i'm sure you've never read any history books for amusement in your spare time. yep.
https://www.waterstones.com/category/cr … -thrillers
thanks though i had no idea! you are the smartest boy ever!
i'm sure you've never read any history books for amusement in your spare time. yep.
Are there many soccer-football books too?
Weird.
Weird.
Fuck Israel
you seem confused. it's ok. i know it must be depressing having a job that nobody ever wants to talk about at dinner.
Yawn, no-one cares what you do - sending the work of creative people to the printers.
"Would sir like 10 oz or 11 oz paper for this one sir? Maybe a bolder font to really make a statement? Very nice sir, we'll have it ready for you in a jiffy"
"Would sir like 10 oz or 11 oz paper for this one sir? Maybe a bolder font to really make a statement? Very nice sir, we'll have it ready for you in a jiffy"
Fuck Israel
you don't know what editors do, and that's fine. your job is incredibly boring and arcane to me too. the difference is i don't go on about how no one cares about engineering, the world doesn't need engineers, engineers are the root of all the worlds problems ... you seem to have some serious issues with your own personality and identity-formation.
The worst thing is that this consultant said to me "we're not writing a novel" as if my writing was too flowery and descriptive. They deleted every time I built off a previous point by saying "furthermore", "additionally", or "therefore". I've been doing technical writing for quite some time and have never heard anything close to that critique before.uziq wrote:
that indeed sounds like a clusterfuck.
They also tried to get me on board with their point of view and asked "Don't you think this is better?" to which I replied "okay" in my admittedly monotone voice. Then the person smarmily repeated "okay" and suggested I didn't agree with them, which I didn't, but they couldn't know that from my tone. Instant way to make me forever disagree with someone out of spite.
Last edited by DesertFox- (2020-10-30 11:52:17)
If there's one thing that gets someone on my bad side in business, it's smarm. Never forgotten. I don't think I've ever interacted with a consultant (or inspector) who didn't radiate some low level amount of it. Almost as bad as a mergee pretending that he's a partner and getting into everyone's business.
I do sympathize with your work being questioned purely for the sake of it being questioned. I understand it makes them feel important though, and they get to claim that they're being "useful."
Being endlessly second-guessed I think is something you should expect with a client when building websites, but not within the internal workings of your company. Sorry, DF.
I do sympathize with your work being questioned purely for the sake of it being questioned. I understand it makes them feel important though, and they get to claim that they're being "useful."
Being endlessly second-guessed I think is something you should expect with a client when building websites, but not within the internal workings of your company. Sorry, DF.
Most consultants have little to offer besides smarm, what do most of them really offer?
The poor QA assistant is being bullied by the QA officer, poor guy has his time wasted for no reason.
"Put the version number in the filename of these 300 documents. Take the title out of the filename of these 300 documents. Change the date format from DDMMYY to DD.MM.YYYY, convert all these obsolete PDFs into word documents" and so it goes on.
My colleague really is leaving, his job has been advertised and the description doesn't cover half of what he does.
I saw him and his manager talking and going through all the projects which need to be delivered in the short term, with his manager getting paler and paler - never seen an Irishman go pale before. Hopefully he'll rape the company on consultancy work, they deserve it.
The poor QA assistant is being bullied by the QA officer, poor guy has his time wasted for no reason.
"Put the version number in the filename of these 300 documents. Take the title out of the filename of these 300 documents. Change the date format from DDMMYY to DD.MM.YYYY, convert all these obsolete PDFs into word documents" and so it goes on.
My colleague really is leaving, his job has been advertised and the description doesn't cover half of what he does.
I saw him and his manager talking and going through all the projects which need to be delivered in the short term, with his manager getting paler and paler - never seen an Irishman go pale before. Hopefully he'll rape the company on consultancy work, they deserve it.
Fuck Israel
I just move old-template documents into a legacy folder. Reformatting archives is apex busywork. I'd have to hire someone just to do nothing but go through it all.
ddmmyyyy sucks. yyyymmdd or yyyymmmdd is where it's at.
ddmmyyyy sucks. yyyymmdd or yyyymmmdd is where it's at.