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Maggie Secara wrote:
> I have a feeling they're shipping with documentation written
> by poor benighted engineers who would rather be doing anything
> else, or secretaries who pour specs into RoboHelp and hope it
> will do.
I was recently laid off from a contract where I was the only tech
writer on the project. I considered posting an announcement on the
whiteboard for the programmers in the department: "TRAINING SESSIONS
FOR MAINTAINING & UPDATING THE MANUAL. Sign up here..." just because
the eternally blank sign-up spaces below would make a statement. (Ha.
We had all developed a sense of gallows humor about the situation.)
But then I realized, everyone in the vicinity of my cube understood
the value of what I do and fought hard to keep me there. It was the
people several levels up in management that needed a whack from the
clue stick, and they weren't going to be strolling past that
whiteboard...
I was fortunate: the folks at my *previous* contract had missed me
enough to hire me back, and so here I am. (But this doesn't have much
bearing on Marc's question, since I had left voluntarily before--i.e.,
they didn't suddenly learn the value of good documentation; they knew
it all along.)
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