RE: How to appease a consultant? ::long::

["Jane Carnall" <jane -dot- carnall -at- digitalbridges -dot- com>]

>He sent me an installation guide to review and even said he'd welcome my
>comments. <snip>
>Well, I tried to be diplomatic but I really thought what he'd written was a
>piece of crap. <snip detailed comments>
>We purchased RoboHELP a few days ago, which he has used to literally dump
>the printed document into HTML-Help format. There is no difference between
>the printed documentation and the HTML-Help file.
>Although he copied basically the entire company when he sent me the
>document, I went to him *personally* and said <snip comments>. He seemed
fine with that
>and went outside to have a smoke.

And got scared and/or angry and/or insecure, or some terrifying combination
of all three. He's in his fifties, you said, which means the job market is
much less flexible for him (particularly in the UK) than it is for you. He
may simply have moaned about you to the engineering manager over a
cigarette. It doesn't sound like the engineering manager takes it
particularly seriously.

>Well, fifteen minutes later, the engineering manager calls me into his
>office to say that "Paul" was upset and didn't appreciate me commenting on
>his work.  The manager was laughing the entire time but suggested that I
>speak to him and just leave him alone.

I think the person you need to talk to is the engineering manager. The
consultant sent you the document asking for comments. You commented: now he
says he doesn't want your comments. Assuming that you were diplomatic
(tough, when faced with a pile of crap masquerading as a document) you can
only respond "I need to know what "Paul" means when he asks me to comment on
a document, since clearly he doesn't mean what *I* mean."

>I still have 3 weeks left on my probation period, he's here until October,
>how would you suggest I deal with him?  I guess I figured if he'd been
doing
>this for 20 years, things like a peer review wouldn't make him run and cry
>to the boss but now I'm afraid to say anything for the next few weeks.

Talk to your manager. Three weeks from the end of a probationary period is a
good time to find out what they think of you. Ask him to assess your
performance (do *not* mention the consultant!) and get it in writing (if
it's a verbal discussion, note down the main points in an e-mail and send
that to your manager). Assuming you get a resounding "We're really happy and
we want you to stay on!" wait a diplomatic 24 hours and then - separately -
raise your difficulty with the consultant's reaction to the review *he*
requested.

>The larger problem is the documentation IS crap and, although the company
is
>happy because "it's better than nothing", after he leaves, I'm the one
stuck
>with actually improving it all.

Once you have your assurance from the company that they love your work and
want you to stay on, tell them you'd like to set up some consistent
standards for the documentation - to be achieved in consultation with the
consultant - and set up mutual meetings to lay out some good guidelines for
writing documentation/creating Help. (If he doesn't want to cooperate at the
meetings, ask your manager to talk to his manager about why he doesn't want
to cooperate.) Get it all down in writing and agreed to by management, that
*new* documentation has to conform to the new standards, and old
documentation is to be revised and updated for consistency.

>I don't want to run like the wind (tech jobs here for native speakers are
>a-plenty) because I've never spent less than two years on any job.  Can
>someone give me any ideas on how to appease him?

Get your groundwork done first (make sure they're dying to keep *you* and
you have confirmation of this). Feel free to try and appease him (bearing in
mind that he's probably scared and insecure and may bite) but do so from a
position of strength, not weakness.

Good luck! (Bear in mind, too, that if you do have to leave, it's not the
end of the world: their loss, your gain. If anyone asks you why you left
early, tell them because you weren't happy with the quality standards and
you weren't able to change them.)

Jane Carnall
Technical Writer, Digital Bridges, Scotland
Unless stated otherwise, these opinions are mine, and mine alone.


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