It’s a way to devalue the craft. It’s like saying that product designers are just there to make things look pretty.
Technical writing is actually probably only about 10 percent writing. It’s a small portion of the job. Most of your time is spent on research, information architecture, content strategy—all these related disciplines. It’s not about typing words on a screen and publishing them somewhere. It’s about telling the right story to your users so they know how to use the product.And some products are harder to use than others.
Sometimes people forget that not all software looks like email. There’s a lot of software that’s actually pretty complex. A lot can go wrong. And the stakes are high when it does. If users do the wrong thing when using a big piece of enterprise software, for example, that company could lose millions of dollars.It seems strange that certain people would find it hard to see the value in technical writing, when the success of a product so clearly depends on it. The product is not usable if users can’t use it.
Absolutely. And I have found, especially in the last few years, that a lot of people don’t conform to the above stereotype. They see the value in what we do. It’s nice to work with folks like that.
Source of TruthAfter five years at that first company, you had become an experienced technical writer. What happened next?
I had a couple more jobs before I landed what I thought was my dream position. I would be the first technical writer at a small company. I was really excited.
It turned out to be a strange place. They were focused on creating a fun company that people wanted to work at—Ping-Pong tables, that startup feel—but without any real substance behind it. They just didn’t know what they were doing. I was one of the oldest people working there and I was twenty-nine.
The two cofounders told me they didn’t want any external documentation. They wanted internal documentation. And they wanted me to document the product not as it actually existed, but as they had originally envisioned it.
The problem is that the two cofounders had each envisioned it differently. So I would sit in a room with them and listen to them argue. “No, we meant for it to look like this!” “No, we wanted it to happen this way!” It was a mess.You said that technical writing is the art of explaining to the user how to use the product. But you can’t do that if you’re not allowed to be honest with the user about what the product is.
Documentation is the source of truth. It’s not marketing. It’s not sales.
You’re there to be honest with the user. You have to be willing to talk about the limitations, the bugs. You have to be willing to talk about the behaviors that will break everything. It’s important because if users don’t trust your product, they’re not going to use your product. Technical documentation is the place where you build that trust.
There’s a push and pull sometimes between the various groups. When I talk to folks in marketing, they’re looking at it from the perspective of how to sell the product. When they see a piece of documentation that describes the product less positively, they don’t understand why it needs to be said that way. So we have a conversation, and try to come to a middle ground where we both feel comfortable. Then, once they’re not paying attention anymore, I sneak back in the stuff that users really need to know.At this particular company, where the cofounders couldn’t agree on what the product was, how did you do your job?
Despite the issues I mentioned, I found a way to move forward. I started writing internal documentation. I created a style guide and I laid the foundations for having technical content more widely shared within the company. I was working well with the developers.
My manager and I had a great working relationship. I had a good performance review. Everything was roses. Then I got pregnant with my second child and I started to take some time off. Just mornings here and there when I woke up and thought, I can’t do it. I’m going to throw up—I can’t go into work. At the time, I had a two-hour commute each way.
I hadn’t told my company that I was pregnant yet, because conventional wisdom says to wait till you get to that twelve-week mark when things feel safer. When I reached that point, I had a conversation with HR. The company was so small that they didn’t have a formal HR department, just a guy who was filling that role. He had no official training, but he was a nice guy. So I pulled him aside and asked about maternity leave. There was no policy in the handbook, because I was the first person at the company who had ever been pregnant.What did he say?
He said he would talk to the cofounders and get back to me. That sounded good to me. I figured the maternity leave wouldn’t be great, but it would be something.
Soon after, on the day I was planning to announce my pregnancy to the rest of the company, one of the cofounders pulled me into a conference room. He told me that things weren’t working out so they were going to eliminate my role.What?
He also said that because I was technically negative in my time off—those days when I was too sick or tired from pregnancy to come into work—I owed the company five days’ pay. Normally, it doesn’t matter if you’re negative: you just keep accruing days and it evens out. He told me he wouldn’t make me pay them back for those days, but in exchange, I wouldn’t be getting any severance.
I was very upset. I told him I was about
