Re: Writers job description/definition

["Paul W Goddard" <paulwgoddard -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Sounds like your co-worker is a good copy editor, not a technical
communicator in the broader sense. If possible, just give him that kind of
work.

A caution, I discovered some time back that posts to this list do end up on
the WWW searchable by Google.

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:49 AM, SB <sylvia -dot- braunstein -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

> Well, I don't think that he views this as reduced contribution.
> He is focused on doing things right. Of course, there is no end to how
> right
> you can do things. So, he formats and formats and formats his heart's
> contents. And he proofreads again and again. Of course this is very nice
> but
> he never meets the deadlines. I don't have the time to proofread what I
> do,
> partially because most of what he does not do falls back on me.
>
> See, I had a MAJOR update of a 725 page document. I had two months to do
> it.
> It was inhuman. On top of that, I had to give him a lot of support and
> feedback on this new project. He had 3 doc he had to work on: a getting
> started guide (10 pages or so), an already existing User Manual and an
> Installation Manual.
>
> So for two weeks, he worked on the getting started guide. While I had
> another urgent project, I offered to help him so that he could meet the
> deadline. He gave me half of his User Manual (this is how he split it) and
> I
> edited and formatted it in one day. After 5 days, he is still not done
> with
> the second half but that is because he is now waiting for the Getting
> Started Guide, which I also took over from him. This is what happened with
> that:
>
> I could hear what was going on and he knew that the deadline was extremely
> tight but he thought it was useful to proofread all the warnings at the
> beginning of the document, warnings that are in all of our documentation
> and
> I have never read most of them, assuming that whoever put them in there
> checked the contents. He asked me to review only the warnings but I
> reviewed
> the whole document (10 pages), despite the amount of pressure I am
> under. So, yes, there were mistakes indeed but to me these warnings were
> trivial and we could definitely have reviewed that at a time where we
> didn't
> have an insane deadline (and knowing it too). To me, since I am
> responsible
> for the documentation, the important issue was to verify the contents of
> the
> Getting Started Guide.
>
> What I read was inaccurate and incomplete. I had somewhere around 120
> remarks on those 10 pages, some of which were trivial, some of which were
> extremely important. I didn't send them to anyone else to give him a
> chance
> to take care of it. I was not angry or upset, just could not understand
> how
> you write a getting started guide without looking at the product. He got
> very offended and told me that he could find plenty of mistakes in my
> documentation too if he wanted, which is true, only unfortunately, I don't
> have the luxury that he does.
>
> He went to complain on my remarks and we were both told that there was no
> time to make the changes, some of which were trivial but others were
> really
> important. So, I accepted that and sent out an email with my comments to
> everybody in charge saying that I thought that the user would not be able
> to
> install the product with this piece of paper and that I understood that we
> could not make changes but that I recommend that the document be tested
> before the release. The Support Manager immediately said that I was right
> and that it could not be released like that and he had it tested. The
> document failed to provide the necessary information. So, it became my
> project to update it, me and my big mouth.
>
> So, while I was doing good progress despite the setbacks, I offered to
> format to rest of the User Manual to let him work on the Installation
> Manual
> only. He told me that maybe I should take the Installation Manual, which
> still needed to be completely written, and that it was easier for him to
> do
> the formatting. Well, my other project is now on hold and I am doing this
> guy's job. Seriously, it took me one day to format half of the manual,
> even
> if he had a couple of questions, why after five days is his part not done
> yet? Oh, of course now he is "waiting for the changes" that were made in
> the
> Getting Started Guide.
>
> Him and I had a few arguments. I asked him to update the warnings in my
> manual since he had spent so much time on them. He said that it as only
> half
> an hour. I know that he spent on it three whole days and that he had them
> reviewed and had sat with SMEs to change them. I told him that this was
> definitely more important than the Getting Started Guide itself,
> especially
> that it has been like that for the past three years at least and now was
> the
> right moment to fix this. However, regarding the contents of the Getting
> Started, he said that this is what the SMEs gave him. I told him that SMEs
> are not supposed to communicate things to users.
>
> The other big argument I had with him is that he decided that we have to
> work with a template, which is true, we have to. So he decided to change
> everything, the layout, the way things work etc. He came up with igneous
> solutions such as no spacing before and after, which causes a LOT of
> additional work. He calls the styles by his choice, meaning that applying
> this to the rest of the documentation will be a major problem.
>
> We had to outsource the famous User Manual because the document was a
> conversion from a PDF and was a mess. The lady that formatted it used his
> template. It took her 60 hours to format the document (260 pages) and
> she didn't finish it. So, when I finally HAD to use his template, I saw
> that
> he just did what he wanted, reinvented the wheel with his ingenious ideas
> and it was no wonder that this woman took that long to format the
> document.
> He even said that "footers" are difficult to do. Excuse-me? Are talking
> about professionals here? Well, I could see why the footers were difficult
> to do the way the template is set up. The more I was doing the formatting,
> the more I was getting upset at him taking the liberty of doing whatever
> he
> feels like doing. His argument: "it works for me" and "this is the
> template
> that I take from company to company". I told him that he was working for
> our
> company and not another one. I think that he has a lot of nerve to write
> on
> his bill "template" each month and that it works like this (or rather
> doesn't work). Of course, there are fancy buttons and yes he loves
> VBA. However, my document would not remain attached to his template and
> then
> the styles would collapse until I reattached it, which was every few
> minutes. So, not only do I have so much work to do, I also have to deal
> with
> this stupid template of his.
>
> Please forgive me for pouring out my frustration here in so many details
> and
> sorry for venting; I have just been steaming inside and trying to take as
> much as I could on myself but I realize that he has to be a lone technical
> writer, he has to be able to tell the "others" about the professionalism,
> and he has to be able to do things just the way he wants to do them. I am
> really ready to let go but can't right now.
>
> On 2/25/08, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:
> >
> > Oops.  That should have read "big difference between
> > enjoying an easy ride for a little while *and* deciding
> > that that reduced contribution is all you're ever going to
> > provide."
> >
> > Gene
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> Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or
> printed documentation. Features include support for Windows Vista & 2007
> Microsoft Office, team authoring, plus more.
> http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList
>
> True single source, conditional content, PDF export, modular help.
> Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
> documentation. Boost your productivity! http://www.helpandmanual.com
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-- 
Paul W Goddard
Technical and Business Communications
425-238-1732
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or 
printed documentation. Features include support for Windows Vista & 2007 
Microsoft Office, team authoring, plus more.
http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

True single source, conditional content, PDF export, modular help.
Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
documentation. Boost your productivity! http://www.helpandmanual.com

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