"Linux is now not supported"

[technical writing plus]

My response to the interview question would be the same three part answer
that I gave before. 1 Find out for sure what the real word is, 2 find out
whether the people who gave that real word really have the say-so, and then,
assuming that they do, 3 proceed to figure out what actually has to be done
to the docs at this late stage. 
  Note: Actually finding out what the real word is (and not just the whys
and wherefores, which after all can be irrelevant) can be a challenge.
Finding out who gave the word might be hard too. 
  The part 3, the actual 'what needs to be done now?', is of course right
important. But it should be asked only after the first two things. 
  None of this would be meant as trying to poke holes in the questions of
the interviewer. In fact, it's a valid question. 'What do you do, when faced
at the last minute, with a potential massive change to the docs?'

Jim Jones

-----Original Message-----
> That's too bad, because I wish I had a few bucks for every time
> someone working for me made major changes to a document
> because "they heard" something was going to change from
> someone and didn't take the time to verify that what "they
> heard" was a definite decision and not just one that someone

The question was:
- "It's Friday afternoon, your four 200-page document PDFs are on the
FinalPDF server to be picked up by the build server, the build is
Saturday morning, and you heard that Linux is now not supported. Tell
me what you do in the first 15 minutes."

You are assuming something. You also might have heard it from the VP
of Software Development. Poking holes in the interview question is
not the "test". This is an interview and the purpose of the question
was to see if you knew a process. Answer the question....