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In my 20-plus years in government and industry, I find that everybody
*thinks* they can write well. The higher up in the managerial hierarchy
they are, the better a writer they tend to think they are. Unfortunately
it has been my experience that the opposite usually is true. As technical
writers we are in a kind of a paradox - we need to prove our worth to the
company so they want us around, but the more we prove our worth, that we
can write better then the engineers, programmers, project managers (pick
one), the less they want us around. I came onto a project last year where
I literally had to steal the user manual from one of the developers. He
had been working on it for about 9 months, and it consisted of 6MB worth
of screenshots and a hodgepodge of data from the functional description
and a white paper. He was protecting that manual as if his job depended on
it. I've worked with other engineers who, when I gave them a document and
asked them to verify the technical accuracy of something, did a copy edit
instead (things like changing *appear* to *display*, *happy* to *glad*,
etc.) and never looked at the technical material. It seemed like they were
more interested in having their input included in the manual then whether
the technical content was correct.
I don't know whether the decline in TW jobs means we aren't perceived as
being needed, or that maybe we are seen as something of a threat.
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