TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
> hi, are there any pros/cons to having each tech writer in an
> organization report to an engineering manager, instead of
> having a tech pubs department?
I am the lone tech writer in a small software company, and I report
to the director of engineering. I'm primarily writing API documentation
(we make a toolkit), so this seems a logical place to put me. This
gets me easy access to SMEs (my peers), the same tools and development
environment as them, and easy access to the administrivia that's going
to affect me that might seem too unimportant to pass on if I were outside
the group (e.g. planned server outages, workarounds to bugs, etc). I
find it quite valuable to be in the same group as those who are developing
what I'm documenting.
(We have a separate UI design group, and if I were writing end-user
documentation I would want to be a member of that group.)
A few observations:
Your manager might not know much, if anything, about technical writing.
You will have to educate him about what you can do. (This is great; it
means you probably start with fewer managerial prejudices, though you
might get unlucky and get a manager who thinks you're just a secretary
or something.) You'll probably also have to educate him about what tools
and support you'll need to do your job. (For example, it might not occur
to him to budget for that Framemaker upgrade you want, or for the SIGDOC
conference you want to go to.)
Your manager might sometimes forget that you're a writer and not an
engineer, and assume that you have technical knowledge that you might
not actually have. Personally, I find it's a good thing if I can just
roll with that; if he says "you'll need to reconfigure the server before
this new feature will work" and you can just go and *do* that, you'll
show that you've got major clues and are a full member of his team.
(In short, when he remembers that you're not an engineer, you may impress
the crap out of him. You're in a great position to shatter the bad
impressions some people have of tech writers' technical knowledge.)
If you're not quite there yet (it takes time to develop the experience
that lets you do that), you may need to ask for more help than you might
be used to (as compared to a doc manager who has a better handle on what
his writers can and can't do and may have already had these arguments
with engineering managers on your behalf). In many ways your manaager is
one of your SMEs in addition to being your manager; handle him with all
the consideration and diplomacy that you would use for your other SMEs.
To your manager, the documentation is *probably* of secondary interest
compared to the product itself. He's an engineer himself (I assume);
he naturally thinks of code first. Be prepared to work independently,
without much management support.
You may have to be more pro-active with your manager than you're
used to: push drafts in front of him, give him a heads-up when
you see issues looming, etc. You'll especially need to make yourself
more visible (politely and benignly) so that he'll know that you're
actually doing something, since he doesn't see code coming out. :-)
If you are the only tech writer on an engineering team, you are in many
ways an ambassador for our profession. Do a good job and those engineers
will probably treat future tech writers (at that company or in future
jobs) with a lot more respect. Screw it up, and you've added to the
prejudices that many engineers have against "stupid, annoying writers".
This role isn't for everyone.
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available now at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
TECH*COMM 2001 Conference, July 15-18 in Washington, DC
The Help Technology Conference, August 21-24 in Boston, MA
Details and online registration at http://www.SolutionsEvents.com
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
