I'm a typesetter, too. Looks like we both work for a financial printing company (Peter mentioned "filing with the government," I assume it's SEC he is talking about).
Here are my two cents to Peter's description:
First of all, there are ups and downs all the time in this job. Few weeks during the "proxy" season (mid-February through mid-April), you work your ass off, 12 or more hours a day in average, no weekends (company does pay overtime and double time--yet). And there are times when you have almost nothing to do, if stock market is down (financial printing depends very much on it).
The company I work for uses a typesetting system which needs to be learned. My typesetting is actually a programming: I insert commands and formats in an ASCII text (HTML programmer does almost the same). This typesetting system is the most powerful I've ever worked with before; you can do with text virtually anything you can imagine (except for graphic effects, which are not typesetting per se). Unfortunately, the company has not upgraded this system for about eight years, and is planning to switch to MS Word-based tool--precisely because the latter does not need thinking and same level of learning and skills as the current system.
If you understand "career" as "a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement," typesetting is not for you. There is comparatively low ceiling of maximum salary, and no room for growth. But you can learn the system (could be pretty interesting by itself) with a couple of other SGML-like languages, and move into development or IT.
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Does require thinking, but not actually a "career"
Date: 2003-06-27 03:56 pm (UTC)Here are my two cents to Peter's description:
First of all, there are ups and downs all the time in this job. Few weeks during the "proxy" season (mid-February through mid-April), you work your ass off, 12 or more hours a day in average, no weekends (company does pay overtime and double time--yet). And there are times when you have almost nothing to do, if stock market is down (financial printing depends very much on it).
The company I work for uses a typesetting system which needs to be learned. My typesetting is actually a programming: I insert commands and formats in an ASCII text (HTML programmer does almost the same). This typesetting system is the most powerful I've ever worked with before; you can do with text virtually anything you can imagine (except for graphic effects, which are not typesetting per se). Unfortunately, the company has not upgraded this system for about eight years, and is planning to switch to MS Word-based tool--precisely because the latter does not need thinking and same level of learning and skills as the current system.
If you understand "career" as "a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement," typesetting is not for you. There is comparatively low ceiling of maximum salary, and no room for growth. But you can learn the system (could be pretty interesting by itself) with a couple of other SGML-like languages, and move into development or IT.
S:)