RE: Happy to be a Tech Writer?

[Chris Borokowski <athloi -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

In my experience, the larger the product, the fewer
people know it comprehensively.

--- Kevin McLauchlan <kmclauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
wrote:

> Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com] observed:
> 
> > From: "Kevin McLauchlan"
> <kmclauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
> > > I find it fascinating that a number of you seem
> to work in companies
> > where
> > > the writer knows more about the overall product
> than the Eng-Test and QA
> > > and integration support people.
> 
> > I suspect that many of us who find ourselves in
> this position
> > are working in environments where there may not
> *be*
> > "Eng-Test and QA and integration support people"
> who are
> > separate entities from whatever team the writers
> report to.
> > When I was an engineer in a big aerospace company
> with
> > Test, QA and Systems Integration groups, we
> engineers and
> > the few writer/editors who supported us seldom
> knew much
> > more about the "overall product" than our
> particular part
> > and how it interacted with its next highest level
> assembly;
> > in the 30-person company I currently work for,
> "test, QA
> > and integration support" are performed by a team
> of...
> > 30 people.
> 
> Different strokes, I guess.
> I joined "this" company in '98, when it was about 35
> people. 
> We had a 1-person IT dept., a receptionist (who got
> laryngitis a _lot_), a
> 2-person "Product Validation" crew (that was a
> combination of Eng-Test and
> QA and was really just a barnacle on the hide of
> Engineering), a hardware
> guy, an HR person, a biz-dev guy, a marketing woman,
> an arteeste (who was
> tight with marketing/biz-dev), a bunch of firmware,
> driver, and software
> developers.... oh, and the new kid, their first tech
> writer.
> 
> Several years (including growth to 200 bods,
> followed by some brutal
> shrinkage) and two acquisitions later, we're a
> 35-person branch office of a
> thousand-plus-person multi-national. The same HR
> person works 3-day weeks to
> co-ordinate us with the American head office. The
> biz-dev guy is still here.
> We have a couple of local Customer Support guys, a
> security-and-crypto
> architect, a coordinator for the umpteen agency
> certifications and
> validations, the same hardware guy, a minor slew of
> firmware and software
> developers, and a four-person (plus manager)
> Eng-Test group ... oh, and that
> same writer guy. The QA, Prod Manglement, Proj
> Manglement, IT, accounting
> and various other functions are done elsewhere by
> actual groups of people.
> 
> So, along with my other previous high-tech
> employment, going back
> <mumbledy-mumble> years and with companies a hundred
> times bigger, I've
> pretty much always known testing as a separate
> function - separate from the
> folks who make the stuff.  It's like being your own
> editor. You can do it,
> and it kinda works, but don't trust it. Better to
> have somebody with
> different viewpoint and loyalty and skills doing the
> testing.
> 
> Meanwhile, echoing somebody else on the list, I'd
> say I'm quite a happy
> camper about 3 working days out of every 5. The
> other days it might be a
> little draggy, or it might be horribly frustrating.
> 
> 
> Kevin
> 
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