Re: Dilbert et. al.

[Mike Christie <mikec -at- LUNA -dot- SYNTEL -dot- COM>]

Arlen sez
> C'mon. Lighten Up. Give the poor guy a break.

> Life's too short to be *that* serious!

I agree. Personally, I found the strip hilarious, as did one of our
developers who saw it (and who had enough of a sense of humor about
himself to appreciate that he *would* leave a draft on his desk for six
months if I didn't come rattle his cage). In fact, I was going to send a
copy to my brother as a way of explaining what I do for a living. :-)

I can appreciate that some folks may not have found it funny. Different
people find different things funny. What bothers me is how many of us
were offended by the strip. It seems a lot of us are rather thin-skinned.
That is justified, to an extent, given the lack of recognition technical
writers often experience. But rather than be offended, we should be
motivated to further prove that we *are* professionals, and that we do in
fact do our jobs well, even under difficult circumstances.

There was a column by the computing editor of the San Jose Mercury News
several Sundays ago in which he (rightly, in my mind) criticized the
quality of many software manuals. I simply saw it as evidence that in many
companies, in many circumstances, management does not give their tech
pubs staff the opportunity to do the best job they can do. And I wrote
him saying so. But the next week, the editor reported that he had never been
flamed so badly as he was from that column. Most of the rage, he said, was
from technical writers who thought they were being insulted. Folks, this
is *not* the way to win friends and influence people!

99.9% of us do the best job we can with the resources we have. When we can,
and as necessary, we lobby for more people, more time, better tools, or
more access to engineers. But the final product is often more a result of the
importance management places on the documentation than it is a showcase
of the best work we can do under the best circumstances. As
professionals, we should keep on keepin' on, do what we can, where we
can, when we can, to enhance the status of our profession.

And, as I think about it, TECHWR-L is a good place for us to vent amongst
ourselves. Perhaps so doing can help us keep our cool when dealing with
engineers who let our dafts sit on their desks until they turn to dust,
and with managment that gives a Mac and tells us to document a Windows
product which they won't even let us see.

We're making progesss folks. Let's keep heading in the right direction!

Mike Christie
Technical Writer
Syntelligence Systems, Inc.
mikec -at- syntel -dot- com