Touch Typist Wanted

[envieone]

Hey YW members-
You have applied for a job as a reporter for a newspaper. Your journalistic skills are excellent. You are not a touch typist, however, and your typing is very slow. For this reason, the managing editor is reluctant to hire you at the position's advertised salary. How would you feel in this situation? Is the editor right? Would you be willing to learn to type or accept the job at a lower salary?

[achtungbaby]

Hello evieone, welcome to YW. Depends on how much the editor is trying to knock the salary down. Otherwise, I'd suggest learning to type. If journalism is your field, knowing how to type is pretty important.

[kasia]

heard this same question from a programmer not too long ago, right?

[Craig]

Originally posted by kasia@Jan 28 2003, 04:30 PM
heard this same question from a programmer not too long ago, right?
I was probably ranting that there are people being employed as "programmers" that don't know how to touch-type.

However, adding to this discussion, touch-typing is not a hard skill to learn and is useful in a multitude of positions. It's a needed skill that is demonstrable if requested and potentially more objectively measured than most. I would seriously question the motivation and potential work ethic of any employee if they hadn't learned skills that I would deem crucial and especially applicable in this day and age.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

me me me! 140 wpm right here baby. Sadly beyond typing and net navigation, I possess no other computer-related skills.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

if the employee in the field of journalism lacks such a basic skill as typing, it's necessarily going to lower his productivity and incur additional costs to the organization which he works for. So I think it's perfectly justifiable to lower the employee's salary in line with the fact that since he can't type, he either has to spend more time in the office typing up his stuff, or writing his articles by hand and shoving the typing off onto someone else, or some other ad-hoc time wasting solution.

Exceptions might be made for those of exceptional skills, of course. For example, the publishing company I used to work for contracted to publish this textbook by a prof who had written out practically his whole manuscript by hand. he's a freakin' genius, but he never learned to use a computer. that got me an additional 6 months of work after my temporary contract was supposed to end just typing up his manuscript into LaTeX. But professors on the cutting edge of statistical mechanics research are rare enough that they can be forgiven for not knowing how to type, speak conversational English, show up to class on time, etc., as long as they produce good research. Journalists are rather less rare and thus it's harder to forgive them for lacking such important skills.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by kasia@Jan 28 2003, 05:30 PM
heard this same question from a programmer not too long ago, right?
i don't think it's necessary to know how to touch-type as a programmer. but it's always rare to come across a programmer that does not know how to do that. one of my project managers was an excellent programmer. he has a master's degree in CS from CMU. but he does not know how to touch-type. it is not necessary to type really fast when you're programming.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Originally posted by SunWuKung@Jan 28 2003, 11:10 PM
it is not necessary to type really fast when you're programming.
yeah. the bottleneck is in the brain, not the fingers.

[SunWuKong]

Originally posted by AliBabaIncorporated@Jan 28 2003, 11:14 PM
yeah. the bottleneck is in the brain, not the fingers.
and well... if your program is easy enough that you can type it out really fast... then you ought to write something that'll generate the code for you... we do that at the office... :ph34r:

[BeTheReds]

I think that they require you to type only like 40 wpm to be a journalist.

Most people can do that. Besides, as long as you can meet the deadline, it doesn't matter how fast you type.

Secretaries on the other hand must be able to write a lot faster.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Originally posted by BeTheReds@Jan 28 2003, 11:48 PM
I think that they require you to type only like 40 wpm to be a journalist.

Most people can do that. Besides, as long as you can meet the deadline, it doesn't matter how fast you type.

Secretaries on the other hand must be able to write a lot faster.
but seriously. if you are a perfectly healthy guy with no injuries but can only type at 40wpm, that probably indicates that the whole area of kompyooturs and that Infermayshun Sooperhighway are a giant mystery to you. Thus you're useless on any story involving computers, which due to technological progress makes up an increasing portion of societal news, including business section, any crime involving computers, some entertainment news, lots of legal stuff, etc. Maybe if you write gossip or sports, it would be okay ...

[ChinaLama]

shrug, some of us are just really USED to typing w/ a total of 3 fingers.

One of my friend really does type fast (not 140 wpm i think, but fast enough to be a secretary anyway), and he also only uses 3 fingers. He just got used to typing like that back when he played MUD in hs.

[SunWuKong]

i want to learn to touch type with one hand. at my current job, i'm working with 2 keyboards. it would be a very cool skill.