State of the Technical Writer
Wow, today was a rough day. I was in continuous meetings from when I got into the office until lunchtime. From 9 - 12. I had planned to try to work on two different projects today, a couple of hours on each, but got sucked into Boss Fella’s big project. The problem is, I know absolutely nothing about his Big Project, and 1) there are 4 tools/utilities that have to go out ASAP (as soon as QA finishes testing) that need to be documented and 2) that’s the big localization project, we’re translating that product into Japanese. I spent a couple of hours looking at the docs for the utilities. It looks like they were written by a Russian programmer and Boss Fella just had time to dump them into the Word templates. I’ve made it through two of the docs, and even though they’re in the templates, there’s still a lot of cleanup (man, I hate sloppy formatting!). And then I’m comparing what was written to the actual tools (i.e. checking the configuration settings against the actual configuration files). They could use more work, but I will probably run out of time to do anything more than a quick tidying up.
Then, late in the day we had an e-mail from our localization vendor about the translation project. They asked “Can you provide the build UI information for capture localized UI screenshots?” Argh. I knew this was going to come up. I tried to warn the Boss Fella about it too. Basically they need to know how to get to the screen to take the screen shot. And in some cases, that is going to required LOTS of steps, creating multiple records, running scans, etc. Even just writing all this down is a major pain in the arse. I know, I’ve been trying to get this stuff figured out for one of my own projects, because I have to replace a mess of screen shots. And Big Project? Has almost 300 screen shots. Just kill me now. What the heck were we thinking, jumping into a localization project without a consultant to tell Jeff what sort of work he needed to make this simpler? Thank god he ran the cleanup script I found online and removed all the unused screen shots from the project (because the vendor would have just added those to the bill, even though we weren’t using them). I probably saved the company a couple thousand dollars with that single script.
So between those two things, I was sucked into Big Project that all day. I weep for my other projects, which also have new features that desperately need to be documented. I had plenty of work on my plate already. I really don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to manage everything I need to do right now.
After work I headed off to an Agile Boston meeting. The (rather timely for me) topic was “Agile Hiring, it’s a Team Sport.”
When you think of hiring for your team, do you think of paperwork, and endless interviews, wondering if this candidate is really right, and the difficulty in making a decision? Join us this month when Johanna Rothman, author of "Hiring Geeks Who Fit", will explain how to have the team review resumes, interview, create auditions, and make the hiring decisions to ensure you have people who fit with the team.
Oh yeah, I desperately want to find someone that’s a good fit not only for me, but for the teams at BlackOps. Because I know how one new (or bad) person can upset team dynamics. And the team at BlackOps is pretty damn special, and I want to make sure I bring in someone who adds to our collective awesome. The problem is, there just don’t seem to be a whole lotta awesome technical writers out there. I’ve worked with probably 35 different technical writers in my career, and I can’t even count on one hand the number that I would want to work with again. Many of them were competent enough, or pleasant enough. But only a handful were what I’d call excellent. And I’m at the point where I really want to work with excellent. I don’t have time to be riding herd on someone making sure they can do their job. I need someone who is good at what they do, who can see the work that needs to be done and just does it. I’d be happy to mentor someone, if I can find a young writer. The problem is, many of the technical writers that I meet at things like STC or TW networking events are complete dinosaurs. Older than me, and not necessarily keeping up with technology, keeping their skills fresh or following what’s going on in the industry. And that’s not what we need. *sighs*
The Agile meeting was excellent. The speaker gave me lots of Thinky Thoughts. I need to check her web site, because she said she has a whole lot of templates and worksheets available for free.
And then after that I drove over to the massage place that I found online and booked myself an hour massage for after work on Thursday. Because even though I’ve been stretching twice a day for the past couple of days, my back is still achey. So time to call in the big guns and pay for a professional to beat me up. I am soooo looking forward to that.
Then, late in the day we had an e-mail from our localization vendor about the translation project. They asked “Can you provide the build UI information for capture localized UI screenshots?” Argh. I knew this was going to come up. I tried to warn the Boss Fella about it too. Basically they need to know how to get to the screen to take the screen shot. And in some cases, that is going to required LOTS of steps, creating multiple records, running scans, etc. Even just writing all this down is a major pain in the arse. I know, I’ve been trying to get this stuff figured out for one of my own projects, because I have to replace a mess of screen shots. And Big Project? Has almost 300 screen shots. Just kill me now. What the heck were we thinking, jumping into a localization project without a consultant to tell Jeff what sort of work he needed to make this simpler? Thank god he ran the cleanup script I found online and removed all the unused screen shots from the project (because the vendor would have just added those to the bill, even though we weren’t using them). I probably saved the company a couple thousand dollars with that single script.
So between those two things, I was sucked into Big Project that all day. I weep for my other projects, which also have new features that desperately need to be documented. I had plenty of work on my plate already. I really don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to manage everything I need to do right now.
After work I headed off to an Agile Boston meeting. The (rather timely for me) topic was “Agile Hiring, it’s a Team Sport.”
When you think of hiring for your team, do you think of paperwork, and endless interviews, wondering if this candidate is really right, and the difficulty in making a decision? Join us this month when Johanna Rothman, author of "Hiring Geeks Who Fit", will explain how to have the team review resumes, interview, create auditions, and make the hiring decisions to ensure you have people who fit with the team.
Oh yeah, I desperately want to find someone that’s a good fit not only for me, but for the teams at BlackOps. Because I know how one new (or bad) person can upset team dynamics. And the team at BlackOps is pretty damn special, and I want to make sure I bring in someone who adds to our collective awesome. The problem is, there just don’t seem to be a whole lotta awesome technical writers out there. I’ve worked with probably 35 different technical writers in my career, and I can’t even count on one hand the number that I would want to work with again. Many of them were competent enough, or pleasant enough. But only a handful were what I’d call excellent. And I’m at the point where I really want to work with excellent. I don’t have time to be riding herd on someone making sure they can do their job. I need someone who is good at what they do, who can see the work that needs to be done and just does it. I’d be happy to mentor someone, if I can find a young writer. The problem is, many of the technical writers that I meet at things like STC or TW networking events are complete dinosaurs. Older than me, and not necessarily keeping up with technology, keeping their skills fresh or following what’s going on in the industry. And that’s not what we need. *sighs*
The Agile meeting was excellent. The speaker gave me lots of Thinky Thoughts. I need to check her web site, because she said she has a whole lot of templates and worksheets available for free.
And then after that I drove over to the massage place that I found online and booked myself an hour massage for after work on Thursday. Because even though I’ve been stretching twice a day for the past couple of days, my back is still achey. So time to call in the big guns and pay for a professional to beat me up. I am soooo looking forward to that.