Here's what a big shot in our company said:
- tech writers just execute
- tech writers should no longer use our well- established CCMS and switch to Word instead
- the Cyber Resilience Act has no impact on user manuals
He really knows his shit. *irony off*
#techWriterLife
This is important. "The writers you let go were the supply chain for the intelligence you're now betting on."
"β¦documentation [β¦] is not a byproduct of development: it's the glue that ties the product together."
Adventures in technical writing: I just caught this typo in a draft:
"Shite+Win+S (Windows)"
Freudian slip?
We're using AI to integrate w/ 3rd-party systems. Our devs must feed the AI complete API reference & thorough, well formatted business docs for any chance of success.
AI requires excellent documentation & devs can do it when the user is a machine. Ironic. #techWriterLife #writeTheDocs
Fun with LLMs: the feature is called "Manual Pricer". The LLM decides that "Manual Pricier" is better and uses that throughout.
We added a "Release Notes" field to Jira as part of a project to automate release comms. Devs & QA folks are using it a lot. This unpromoted field is seeing better adoption than anything else we've rolled out ever. Now to rename to "User Release Notes" to scare folks away & maybe add "Engineering Release Notes" to keep the momentum up.
I spent 3 hours "fixing" a feature that hadn't been documented sufficiently⦠in my own scripts. It is very well documented now.
I experimented with Android emulators last week to doc a mobile app. After a short vacation I returned to find that my work deactivated Linux on Windows. Looks like I just needed to re-enable WSL 2 and Hyper-V, but damn that was a painful few minutes. Like leaning back into your comfy dev-environment chair & falling into space because something removed the back.
"[Techimabob-thingy] is powered by AI, so mistakes are possible. Review output carefully before use." Right. In decades of tech writing my experience proves folks are super careful & thorough when reviewing anything, esp. their "own" work.
Vika π
Phil Davis