Re: ratio of writers to engineers

[Bruce Nevin <bnevin -at- CISCO -dot- COM>]

This was my question:

> Anyone have figures on the ratio of writers to engineers in computer
> companies? My manager asked me, and I said I'd enquire here.

The answers to such a question always disclose assumptions one should have
stipulated and other questions one should have asked, but all told this
question got pretty consistent results. A writer:engineer ratio of 1:10 or
1:12 seems to be a norm. Companies that we would prefer to be the standard
bearers come in with ratios like 1:4, 1:5, and 1:7. At the other end, 1:20
is pretty common, and unhappy 1:50 situations exist. (Excerpts from
contributions at the end.)

I understand that my own situation is about 1:13.

Here are some of the follow-on thoughts:

        The prescription/description distinction between what is the norm and
        what ought to be. People told me the observed norm, with some
evaluative
        comments.

        Internal vs. external documentation, specs vs. customer docs.
        Respondants concurred in my assumption: external customer docs.

        It doesn't appear to matter much what kind of company, or even perhaps
        whether it's a hight-tech company or not, though some people raised
the
        question.

        The ratio can be especially volatile in (small?) companies using
        contract writers.

        Norms seem to be higher in parts of California and parts of Europe.

Thanks to:

Andrew Woodhouse        <awoodhou -at- mpc-uk -dot- com>
John Glenn              <sfarmh1 -at- scfn -dot- thpl -dot- lib -dot- fl -dot- us>
Sarah Perrault          <sarahp -at- keysafe -dot- com> (1:17)
Bill Bledsoe            <bill -at- envision -dot- com>
Jim Barton              <Jxburton -at- aol -dot- com>
David Blyth             <dblyth -at- qualcomm -dot- com>
Rogers George           (reg13 -at- aol -dot- com)
Steiner Franz           <STEINERF -at- pcmes -dot- avl -dot- co -dot- at>
Pamela Shannon          <pam -at- workgroup -dot- com>
Charles Cantrell        <chc -at- ontario -dot- com>
Brenda Huettner         <bphuettner -at- wsicorp -dot- com>

Others (and some of these) asked for a summary.

................................................................................
>In JoAnn Hackos' class about documentation management (from SkillTech
>Professional Seminars) she quoted some figures.  Her average was right at
>1:15.  She said that HP was probably best in industry at somewhere near
>1:7.
................................................................................
>Personal experience in both hardware and software environments
>is that there is one writer for 10 to 50 or more engineers;
>this assumes engineers write their own internal docs.
................................................................................
>I don't know the ratio where I work (<mumble>--huge mysterious bureaucracy),
>though it was 1:4 in a small software company where I previously worked.
................................................................................
>The range in the San Diego area is 1:5 on the low end to 1:20 (the high end).
>Medium is 1:10.  The companies contacted felt 1:10 actually worked pretty well
>and the TWs weren't too unhappy.  Everyone at the 1:5 company is ecstatic
>with the situation.  TWs at the 1:20+ company are pretty miserable and the
>corporate documentation reflects the problem.

>1:10 may be worth shooting for.
................................................................................
>Well, when I was at Gateway 2000, I'd guess we had about 50 engineers in  the
>Product Development department. The tech pubs department had about half a
>dozen writers. (Call it ten to one) But I'd also say there were as many as
>fifty people in the company who had writing technical things as a major part
>of their job responsibilies. . .
................................................................................
>A good ratio of writers to engineers is 1:4 up to 1:7.

>Kind regards
>from Austria,
................................................................................
>We have 3.5 writers and about 28 engineers. <that's 1:8, campers>
................................................................................
>I am a Manager of Technical Documentation with about 12 years of
>experience. In my experience, it takes about 1 writer to 10 engineers to
>maintain the user documentation for a software/hardware product.

>In talking with another person who was involved with providing writers to
>document the output of an engineering staff in the automotive industry,
>they had leveled off at about the same ratio, and felt like they were
>keeping up. (I don't know anything about what they were doing, or what
>they were documenting.)

>Of course, that ratio does not take in to account the situation that I
>have seen in most environments - that there is a tremendous backlog of
>material that has not be documented.
................................................................................
>     I work at a company where we have about 25 (software) engineers, and
>     two writers.  I have also tried to figure out this type of info -
>     maybe we should ask about number of writers to overall number of
>     employees, or number of writers to corporate income? <~1:12>
................................................................................
>I'm not sure what you mean by "computer companies" but we are a developer of
>network management software for digital mobile telephone networks and we
>have 33
>employees of which 1 is a full-time (contract) writer and 5 more
>(including me)
>are "documentation/QA/integration engineers".

>We used to have 4 full time writers (including me) but 2 were made
>redundant, one
>(a contractor) resigned and I was moved into the test/integration team.

<1:33, was ~1:8>
................................................................................

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