RE: Yahoo has no staff tech writers

[Shea Michael EXT <Michael -dot- Shea -dot- extern -at- icn -dot- siemens -dot- de>]

Chuck wrote:
<I was mulling about this afterward, wondering how to sell the advantages of
<have a staff technical documentation department...

I have no data to prove this, but it is my assumption that technical writers are probably cheaper than engineers. The advantage over short-term contract writers is that your staff is or at least should be intimately familiar with the product, knows the SMEs, has the authority of a fellow co-worker. [Speaking as a writer for a contract firm, contract staff gives employers great staffing flexibility and reduces overhead.] Using engineers as tech writers is expensive and uses skill sets which engineers are stereotypically not known for: the ability to communicate clearly and succinctly.

As to job titles, I have always been partial to information architect. But there are plenty of articles out there about knowledge workers.

Chuck wrote:

<I worked at a company once that charged for technical support (as well as
<for training), something that is becoming more common. Technical support was
<seen as a profit center. What I realized about this is that when a company
<uses this business model, there is absolutely no incentive whatsoever to
<improve the products' usability. Meanwhile, customers and users suffer.

I disagree with this statement though I am sure there are companies that fit this depiction. Technical support is expensive, very expensive. Very often the attitude of customers is, "I paid xxx thousand dollars for this product, I don't have time to read the manual". Now we have a problem. You can:

Charge more for the product and give free tech support, but price yourself out of the market
Charge for tech support and annoy your customers who are now complaining why tech support costs so much

Unless your company has a sterling reputation for technical documentation, it is hard to overcome user bias against reading it. Pouring tons of extra money into producing superior technical documentation would be a long-term investment. One bad manual can do a lot of damage.

Another long term investment solution would be to pour a lot of effort into developing a product which is very user friendly and error free.

I think this is a difficult line to walk. Just because a company charges for tech support there is no incentive to improve the product. If the product consistently stinks, people will simply stop buying it.

Michael Shea
XpressLink Documentation
c/o ICN AS BA ST2

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