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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

> Why not employ a technical writer/documenter/whatever job title you like

Primarily because it's a far, far more complicated job than that and you can't really hire someone off the street to do it effectively. Typically in a tech company a tech writer is going to know almost as much or more (after years of experience diving into every detail) about a given technology or application or API, and so that begs the question why not make twice as much working as a software developer and not have to sort out these types of messes?

Also job security. Anyone doing this work full-time is the first on the chopping block, and developers who are working on documentation tend to be perceived as lower status since they aren't delivering features.

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You explained why no one wants to take the job in the typical company. They would be disrespected, and likely soon fired.

But a different question is, why is no company trying to do this differently? Like, hiring one good tech writer to maintain the company documentation, and paying them as much as they pay the developers.

> But a different question is, why is no company trying to do this differently?

I once worked at a company - in a different domain - that made a conscious decision to make this kind of hire. It worked incredibly well, and I never understood why more companies didn't do it.

The context in my case was the Australian offices of a management consulting firm (BCG). The Melbourne and Sydney offices hired what were called "editors", brought on at the same grade as the consultants. Not editing as in correcting grammar. But helping the consultants improve the logic of the arguments in their slide decks: so they were logically consistent, easy to understand, and actually addressed the clients' issues. I was a junior consultant back then, and we were constantly pushed by our managers "have you seen Yvonne?" [the Melbourne editor] when preparing for major presentations.

I would love that job, I'm always going back to presentations and finding better ways they could have made the point and identifying missing context what they would need to be more relevant.

A previous team I was on ended up with this role. Strong writer with no technical skills joined the team and worked hand-in-hand with engineers fleshing out docs. It was productive for the engineers because they needed to articulate the ideas very clearly. The writer has been attached to that project now for 6-7 years at this point, and could probably stand in as a support engineer for some problems. It was a little painful getting HR to approve a tech writer getting paid close to an engineer position (this was after a few years).

I do like the sibling comment calling for a librarian. I imagine that would pay a ton of dividends if the librarian was motivated and got support.

Some companies do value technical writers and pay them as much as engineers, but they are still pretty rare.

There are three things that I think are preventing technical writing from being more widely valued:

1. Software companies tend not to distinguish between technical writers who are good at English vs. technical writers who are good at engineering, understand their audience, and can articulate complex ideas to that audience effectively.

2. Technical writers who are good at English make about half as much as technical writers with engineering skills, but they also muddy the hiring waters and drag salaries down for everyone else.

3. Most corporate-people think because they can type up a decent email they can write technical documentation themselves. They're usually wrong on both counts.

As a tech writer, I think this is because it's hard to concretely quantify the value that a tech writer brings, and thus it's hard to make a clear business case for.

> differently? Like, hiring one good tech writer to maintain the company documentation

He assumes that "full understanding (into every detail) of what is being documented is needed" (as I put it). So, the new hire will never get it right 100%. he will both struggle and annoy others (to forever enlighten him), which is a fair point.

But it is not black or white. Others here have more positive experiences

Probably not the same pay as developers but the scenario you describe is already true in most regulated industries, where some regulated body actually asks for the docs on any given product.

> Primarily because it's a far, far more complicated job than that and you can't really hire someone off the street to do it effectively.

This comment is absolutely true and many, of not most, companies fail to understand it. I think the problem stems from corporate-people thinking, "Why should I pay a writer when we all speak English (or whatever language) and can write it ourselves." And that's why so many companies have shitty documentation.

> ...so that begs the question why not make twice as much working as a software developer and not have to sort out these types of messes?

I was a software engineer for 30+ years and got completely burned out on it, so I left engineering to do technical writing. So far, I like it much better because I have far more control over my time. In my experience so far, the sorting-out-messes work is about the same in either field. Both jobs are pretty complex. I also make exactly the same as I did while working as an engineer.

I think the secret to not being first on the chopping block is to show you're delivering value to customers and internal teams. At least I attribute that to my survival through multiple layoffs so far.

> I was a software engineer for 30+ years and got completely burned out on it, so I left engineering to do technical writing

How did you make this transition? Any credentials/certifications you needed? Did you transition within the same company?

My college degree was in writing, so I used that and a portfolio to make the transition. During interviews, it seems my software engineering experience and portfolio are more valued than my writing degree though.

Summary: HIGH Documentation = HIGH staleness + HIGH loss. HIGH staleness is because nobody wants to do it (status is lower). Also… nobody else can do it (full understanding of what is being documented is needed)

So, to solve the first staleness part, there is only two ways: raise the documenter status, or make it somewhat possible (easier?) for someone else to do at least a part of it. are they both really that hopeless?

PS: to solve the second loss/discovery part, I think we are heading for that AI powered simple "unified search" experience.

AI can't solve search. If you look at how google did it, they bullied and cajoled site owners to add detailed metadata to the top of pages. It's not magic, it's creating incentives for people to create documentation.

'bullied and cajoled' is an interesting set of verbs to use here. Is there a reason not to use metadata? Doesn't it make the web easier to index, and therefore easier for everyone to use?

>Is there a reason not to use metadata? Doesn't it make the web easier to index, and therefore easier for everyone to use?

Yes, there's a very good reason not to use metadata: it's extra work, and it's not very fun, just like writing docs for software. So people don't want to do it because it isn't "sexy" (and there aren't very good incentives to overcome people's reluctance to do that work).

Because of this, just like any job that people don't really want to do, you have to "bully and cajole" them into doing it.

A human has to write this type of metadata.

If you don't include the right metadata, google won't rank you highly. If you include the right metadata, your content will get higher rankings and the snazzy preview cards on different social media platforms.

Metadata is good! There are structural incentives to be mediocre though.

The age old issue. There's oodles of data at how people don't keep doing it because it's toil to them.

The better question to ask is if AI can do the ghost writing that high-documentation culture needs. This is an interesting hypothesis for GPT-4

First, I’m assuming the documentation is already updated (i.e., 1st part is OK = no staleness)

Second, the whole point of AI NLP search (i.e., 2nd part = loss) is that it does not need metadata (which was the basis of the now mostly abandoned semantic web approach to KM).

You need to

1) Link to the documentation in your tools

2) Ensure everyone has edit access to the linked documents

A feature of docs-as-code is having the (typ. markdown) docs live in the code directories. Leaving no excuses for tech people not to update them, or at least insert a TODO.

Another idea might be, whenever a new feature is closed out, auto-allocate some percentage of its implementation time to documentation, and schedule an interview with a tech writer.

What you probably really want is a librarian (with some degree of technical background). We at least had one for a while for our sales/marketing docs--which are separate from customer-facing technical docs.

> Primarily because it's a far, far more complicated job than that and you can't really hire someone off the street to do it effectively.

Library science is a popular area of study but the job market isn’t great and neither is the pay. Lots of people to choose from here even without poaching from existing libraries.

> you can't really hire someone off the street to do it effectively.

I disagree, I've been apart of a few companies that have done exactly this. I would suggest not presenting this argument as an absolutism.

Usually a tech writer is also some sort of PM role that gets to chase developers and get them to explain what's in their head. Sometimes you have to have such a person on board.

I once did an internship that involved chasing down senior devs and generating documentation for them (needed for FIPS certification). It was a great way to learn about the tech stack. Suffice it to say I didn't have any PM role at all.

I'm not saying a technical writer should have a PM role, but it's a similar role

In my opinion, you shouldn't ask technical writers to manage projects anymore than you would ask engineers to. Both jobs are complex enough without adding an entirely different full-time job on top of the work.

Get the brain dump when it's all still fresh in the head !

> and so that begs the question why not make twice as much working as a software developer and not have to sort out these types of messes?

You partly answered your own question: perhaps you pay the librarian/documentation writer too little? ;-)

Seriously: letting the documentation to be written by such a person won't be as much a cost-reducing measure, but instead mostly an approach to improve the documentation quality.

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