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Dear me. Mr. Plato insists his posts infuriate us. I suppose he imagines we sit out here gnashing our teeth at his, at his what? acumen? profundity? Pointing out to us that some technical writers are incompetent, while noteworthy, is hardly infuriating.
I?m not the first to notice that if ?engineer,? or ?manager,? is substituted for WRTIER the meaning, such as it is, of his last post wouldn?t change one whit. I fail to see what any it has to do with technical writing, except in the most general way. This salt has lost its savor.
One point I found laughingly off target:
snip-----
>Too many writers erect walls between them and the engineers and
>developers. They live inside a bubble of tools and techniques...
snip------
Technical writers are known for their ability to communicate. Indulge me in one story to illustrate my point. I once accepted a contract with a large telecommunications firm here on the east coast to document their computer charge-back system. Their army of computers was routinely accessed by satellite organizations and clients. This was heavy lifting for me.
I quickly discovered my client?s real motive for hiring a technical writer. The ENGINEER who created the system had been passed over for his boss's spot. Through thoughtful planning, he had carefully refrained from communicating anything about the system he?d created to his superiors and, you guessed it, decided to take his bits and bytes and go home.
Amazing as this may seem, this occurred before any writers were involved. These ENGINEERS somehow, mysteriously, managed to arrive at this impasse without technical writer input--believe it or not. My client, the ENGINEER?s new boss, decided to feed a writer to the ENGINEER because--because why? Writers who work with software engineers are renowned for having the patience of Job? No, WRITERS are skilled communicators.
Although I successfully debriefed the ENGINEER, that?s not the point, is it? I was hired for the same reason all writers are hired.
