it's kind of my JOB

[deird1]

I asked one of the team engineers to check whether a technical term was written correctly. He huffed, rolled his eyes slightly, and demanded "Who's questioning it?"

Why, good sir, I am questioning it. It is my bounden duty, as company editor, to question every half-formed piece of drivel that crosses my desk; to tear it to shreds and reconstruct it in a way that makes sense; to challenge every fact, every phrasing; to correct, to change, to disrupt - so that when your document reaches its final destination, and your now-flowing prose delights their every sense, our clients will not, even for a moment, question it.

Comments

[velvetwhip]

Or you could just let it through and the company's reputation would be destroyed and everyone would be out of a job and then this team engineer wouldn't have to worry about writing anything correctly anymore.


Gabrielle

[deird1]

Exactly!

JL says...

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, please, please tell me you said that.

Re: JL says...

[deird1]

A rather incoherent version. Then I went back and edited it to make it read better. :)

[vass]

*applauds*

I'm gonna guess that if you were a man, he wouldn't have huffed and rolled his eyes.

[deird1]

Probably not, no.

[calanthe_b.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is going to be weird and awkward, because you don't know me from the proverbial bar of soap but I've been stalking your editing career of doom tag for a while now because I'm in the process of turning myself into an editor (and it's been very educational, so thank you!).

Anyway, I saw that you worked at Penguin RH for a bit, a while back, and I'm in the process of writing an application for an Editorial Assistant position there. Buried in Adelaide as I am, it's kind of hard to find out stuff about the place, so I was wondering, is there anything you would feel willing to tell me about the place - work culture, what sort of people they tend to look for, etc?

If you'd rather not put anything in public you're very welcome to email me at calantheparasiel at hotmail dot com...

[deird1]

Hi!

Good luck with the editor transformation process! It's a fun (but somewhat frustrating - cf this post) career.

I'd be happy to help you - but I'm not sure how much I can. The way I was hired had almost nothing to do with their normal hiring processes, and since I left they've restructured things a fair bit.

The building is very open plan, with people having meetings out in the middle of the floor. It has a work culture to match: lots of relaxed, conversational stuff, with people having random birthday parties in the kitchen. They're fairly friendly.

They're also fairly into their brand (lots of Penguin stuff all over the building, including the coffee mugs), and would be more inclined to hire you if you made it clear you'd done your research on the company (popular books that they publish, for instance: there are so many "Green Sheep" plushies sitting on top of people's desks).

...not sure how much else I can tell you.

[calanthe_b.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! That's actually very helpful (and reassuring - coming out of academia, I don't have much of an idea of what work culture is like in other fields!). I'm a long-time Penguin reader, so mentioning The Red Queen etc and their recent 23 inclusions in the ABIA awards longlist this year would have to help... :)