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I work in the software industry and around here the programmers rule. I
must say, there is never anything said directly to us, but there is a
prevailing attitude in the company (of about 300) that the documentation
plays a minor role in the overall product and that those of us who put the
doc together have far fewer qualifications than those folks who actually
write the code.
In our particular case I believe there were historical reasons for this
attitude (poor hiring decisions, lack of training and time constraints put
on the writers given when the code had to ship). I'm optimistic that this
is changing but, for our company, we're fighting long held beliefs and they
die hard.
Even now that all doc is online and we have more "visibility" as part of the
product, I'm realistic enough to realize that these attitudes will not
disappear overnight. We are also fighting customer attitudes. Some of
these are:
-- the doc is never right/current so they don't read it
-- the answers they need, they never find so they don't look
-- in the past the answers weren't there, why look again
-- they look up one question, get no help, never look again.
I'm hopeful that as we work closely with the programmers to develop and doc
new enhancements, we tech writers may earn more respect from the
programmers, both for ourselves and our talents and for the part of the
product we supply. Where it's true we don't have programming expertise,
everyone on my staff has multiple qualifications to do her job. I'm hopeful
that these will, one day, be recognized and appreciated for adding quality
to the product.
My 2 cents,
Cheryl D. Kidder
chekid -at- symix -dot- com
----------
From: Eric Haddock
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
Subject: Respect or no?
Date: Monday, September 09, 1996 9:57AM
Two independent posts on the same day about the same thing:
>If you think you get no respect as a writer *now*, try being a
>technical writer.
and:
>Technical writers don't often get the respect they deserve
Really? I guess I'm naive because I haven't heard of this before. I can
understand a few companies here and there--no matter what the profession
there's a company that won't respect it--but the above posts made it sound
like "oh yes, didn't you know? TWs aren't respected nation-wide." None of
the TWs I know personally have ever complained about it so that's the basis
my perception. Am I wearing rose colored glasses?
If I change jobs, should I go in with the perception that it's more
likely than not that I won't be respected for what I do?
Comments on this list are the first for me so I have to ask:
Is there a lack of respect for technical writing at your job? I don't
mean for your personally, but is there a corporate attitude that
systematically denies all TWs in the company appropriate respect?
Who's doing the disrespecting? Engineers? Managers? Fiction writers?
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words."
-- Mark Twain
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To send a message about technical communication to 2500+ list readers,
E-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send administrative commands
ALL other questions or problems concerning the list
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