Re: Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years - Help!
Hello!The worst that can happen is they fire you. It's better than ending up in the ER again.
I am stressed to the point where I actually was in the ER a few months back with stress-induced cardiac arrhythmia.
I am told that years ago an unnamed executive determined that our documents were "too good" and decided to remedy this situation by firing the entire tech pubs department.Find out who, before you send him the email!
If the senior managers aren't interested perhaps 'the customer' might be. I'm sure the Washington Post would delight in telling him.
There are numerous cases where Managers, Senior Managers, Directors, VPs, Chief Engineers, Senior Lead Engineers, and so on, have spent and continue to spend many of their highly paid hours on very poor documentation. T
The wasted man-hours here are absolutely staggering. The number of high-level people doing a poor job of writing and editing is profoundly disturbing to me. The number of programmers and engineers writing docs rather than doing any actual programming or engineering never ceases to amaze me.
This is a specific example of a larger problem here where the uninformed make the decisions and a huge emphasis is placed on the deliverable format. There is no understanding that the formats/tools used to create and maintain a document need not be the deliverable format. However, general ignorance of appropriate tools for documentation and the role of the tech writer is widespread.Write a how it should be done document, make up some guesstimate figures for how much money it could save. This has to be <place tongue> at least 800 pages or it won't be taken seriously </tongue>. Give it to the FD, at least. Should they decide to dispense with your services take it with you, you can always start your new job search letter along the lines of "I wanted to save my previous employer $XX million but they couldn't see the benefit of that so I want to work for someone that takes TW seriously."
Good luck and good health,
Ant
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Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years - Help!: From: Anne . Miller
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