Tech-writers - a necessary evil
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- August 29th, 2008 |
- Comments
New to tech-writing, or cerebration about turn? The key to achiever is recognising that tech-writers are a necessary evil.
Tech-writers are necessary because individual has to compose the person doco. The programmers and managers careful as hell don’t deprivation to. This is actually part of the reason that you’re evil, also. In my experience, most programmers and managers believe that they could compose the manuals if they craved to… they just don’t deprivation to. They might not compose all “flowery” like the tech-writers, but what they compose is correct.
Regrettably, that’s quite often all that’s important to programmers and managers. Thither is a feeling inside the code environment that accuracy = quality. Audience analysis, doco readability, consistency, serviceability, active and passive expression, commas in a list of III or more items… All of these things are relatively fiddling to everyone but the tech-writer. Oh… and the person.
In a class where accuracy is all important, a lot goes over the head of the dummy. I don’t know if it’s intellectual arrogance, but programmers and managers appear to believe that if they believe it, so should the person. It doesn’t matter whether or not they do… they SHOULD! Anserine users! Maybe it’s the geek’s crowning revenge…
Your document can be 100% accurate, but if the audience can’t read it, you’ve lost your time.
So why doesn’t anyone acknowledge this? They do! That’s the weird part. In hypothesis, everyone agrees with you, it’s just in practice that you find yourself out in the cold. I don’t know why this happens. Maybe it’s because most of these guys have never done tech-writing.
So tech-writers drop also long torment about fiddling things. And they bother programmers and managers with fiddling things. But they’re necessary things. Otherwise why would you be employed. Maybe the absence of simple logic abbreviated circuits their brains. Who knows?
What we can get out of this is that there’s a feeling that tech-writers act time, and as a result, they’re pretty much at the bottom of the heap in the code class. I believe a good analogy is the artifact any rich accompany the poor. Dirty little creatures… if only we could do without them…
But thither is an up-side. I don’t deprivation you cerebration it’s all bad.
Being at the bottom of the heap has its advantages. You can go disregarded for years if you deprivation. If you haven’t seen the movie, Office Area, you should hire it. There’s a little ferrety bloke in that who was “let go” years ago. Problem is, no one ever told him, and because of a glitch in payroll he allay got paid. No one ever noticed.
Being a tech-writer’s a bit like that.
When I was managing doco teams, my favourite expression was “All we have to do is manage their expectations and our commitments”. Because programmers and managers resign themselves to the fact that they don’t know what’s going on in the doco group, there’s sometimes a temptation to flag. Don’t give in to this temptation!!! If you ever get caught, doing it, it’ll be like the boy who cried wolf &ndash they’ll never believe your estimates again!
The other risk is that you’ll lose your meaning of urging. And that’s a big part of what makes a good girl. You should be real exact about managing your commitments. This requires discipline, because sometimes it seems you’re the only one that cares, but you have to do it.
One abstraction you should be aware of tho’, is that your average tech-writer in code spends only about 50% of his or her time writing. The rest of your time is exhausted planning, problem solving, fixing your computer, researching, interviewing the programmers, writing activity pracs…
I always found it was a good balance, tho’.
It was when I started managing teams that the bottom really fell out. So the percentage dropped to about 10-20%. Thither were times when I’d go months without writing any help at all. That can be real frustrating, especially if you don’t particularly like managing.
Now managing tech-writers in code is an interesting abstraction. As with most application management positions, you kinda fall into it, because you’re the most adult/experienced person in the company. Regrettably, that doesn’t qualify you to be a manager. Code companies are renowned for dumping people into management roles without any real training or activity.
I don’t really have any advice for you here. If it’s gonna happen, it’ll happen. Just be aware of it, and know that if you fall into a management role, it’s gonna be difficult. (That’s not to have that it can’t be rewarding though…)
The ironic abstraction is that the most difficult aspect of it is that your body are screeching at you to change the group. “The programmers don’t answer our questions!” “None of my activity has been reviewed for the last 2 months!” “The project manager just told me to forget about quality!”
Regrettably, the inexperienced tech-writer is often na