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Subject:RE: Troublesome Writers From:jgarison -at- ide -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 14 Dec 2000 17:08:08 -0500
The really troublesome writers are not the ones who don't follow
instructions or don't have good skills, but they are the ones who foment
revolution in the doc group, disrupt the development organization, or even
derail the whole company.
In my 26 years of software documentation, I have seen only a few instances
of these, but they were real doozies.
In one instance, a few writers went so far as to conspire together to set up
someone for a sexual harassment claim. It cost him his job, but the
"revolutionaries" were also soon gone themselves. I've seen people
manipulate the system for their own personal gain, pit different
organizations against each other, all sorts of stuff that most people would
not believe.
If the writers are just incompetent, document it, put them on a performance
plan, and get rid of them. If they start organizational warfare, that is a
LOT harder to document and to come up with grounds for dismissal, as they
are often crafty enough to keep their own actions hidden. If you ever read
David Copperfield, Uriah Heep is a good example of the type I'm referring
to.
It takes all kinds.
John
John Garison
Documentation Manager
IDe
150 Baker Avenue Extension
Concord, MA 01742
> Okay, lets try a new topic. How to handle troublesome writers.
>
> Yesterday I was thinking about this writer who worked at our firm a
> few years
> back and what a pain she was. No matter what I asked her to do, she
> always went
> off and did something else. She was always fighting with me over
> every little
> sentence. It was a never-ending struggle to edit her documents.
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