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John Posada wrote:
For the most part, I can remember what the application for each document
was about. However, I'm not going to make myself nuts over what a dozen APIs out of 600 did that I wrote about 6 years ago. It all comes down to granularity.
For instance...ask me about details in the user manual I created for the
Oracle Financials package I wrote...no problem. OTOH, ask me in detail about the tool I wrote about that was used to move TIDs from one table to another...you'll get a blank stare.
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I have to agree with John Posada on this one. Expecting someone to remember the intimate details of an application they wrote about 5 or 6 years ago is a rediculous expectation. Heck, I've all but stopped using Japanese and after two years my vocabulary is little more than babble (I studied for three years, had Japanese friends, went to Japan, focused on Japan, so I internalized it). And my chinese has been reduced to little more than "Wo shi meiguoren. Ni shi zhongguoren." You don't use it, you lose it, especially when your head is being filled up with other information, like other products you have to document. Besides, I'm also busy trying to remember useless little details like the fact that I have a dentist appointment in a few weeks, my daughter has a check up coming up, and I need to get salad dressing on my way home from work. Life creeps in, details you no longer need creep out.
Andrew, I understand what you're saying, but judging someone based on their ability to regurgitate arcane information from half a decade ago isn't fair. Let me ask, what were the dlls for the application you were working on five years ago? What were the system requirements? Rattle it off the top of your head, don't look at your portfolio. Can you do it? If you can, then you've got a good memory. If you can't, you're just human. :-)
Sure, it's important that you can provide a summary of what the product does. Sure, you should go through your portfolio and familiarize yourself with what's there. Sure, you should limit your portfolio to a few really good pieces, that way you can actually keep track of what's in it. But you shouldn't have to remember every detail of something you did 5 years ago.
That's my 3 cents worth. Now, I've got to fill my head with even more info!!!!
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