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To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

passo.uno

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Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

#31

Post by PlatoIsADisease »

nicbou wrote: post #26

I write documentation for a living. Although my output is writing, my job is observing, listening and understanding. I can only write well because I have an intimate understanding of my readers' problems, anxieties and confusion. This decides what I write about, and how to write about it. This sort of curation can only come from a thinking, feeling human being. I revise my local public transit guide every time I expe…

>insulting

As as writer, you know this makes it seem emotional rather than factual?

Anyway, I agree with what you are saying. I run a scientific blog that gets 250k-1M users per year, and AI has been terrible for article writing. I use AI for ideas on brainstorming and ideas for titles(which ends up being inspiration rather than copypaste).

Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

#32

Post by Nextgrid »

nicbou wrote: post #26

I write documentation for a living. Although my output is writing, my job is observing, listening and understanding. I can only write well because I have an intimate understanding of my readers' problems, anxieties and confusion. This decides what I write about, and how to write about it. This sort of curation can only come from a thinking, feeling human being. I revise my local public transit guide every time I expe…

The problem is that so many things have been monopolized or oligopolized by equally-mediocre actors so that quality ultimately no longer matters because it's not like people have any options.

You mention you've done work for public transit - well, if public transit documentation suddenly starts being terrible, will it lead to an immediate, noticeable drop in revenue? Doubt it. Firing the technical writer however has an immediate and quantifiable effect on the budget.

Apply the same for software (have you seen how bad tech is lately?) or basically any kind of vertical with a nontrivial barrier to entry where someone can't just say "this sucks and I'm gonna build a better one in a weekend".

Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

#33

Post by PlatoIsADisease »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #19

Meh. A bit too touchy feely for my taste, and not much in ways of good arguments. Some of the things touched on in the article are either extreme romanticisations of the craft or rather naive takes (docs are product truth? Really?!?! That hasn't been the case in ages, with docs for multi-billion dollar solutions, written by highly paid grass fed you won't believe they're not humans!)... The parts about hallucinations…

I love AI and use it daily, but I still run into hallucinations, even in COT/Thinking. I don't think hallucinations are as bad as people make it out to be. But I've been using AI since GPT3, so I'm hyper aware.

Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

#35

Post by Nextgrid »

DeborahWrites wrote: post #21

Yeah. AI might replace tech writers (just like it might replace anyone), but it won't be a GOOD replacement. The companies with the best docs will absolutely still have tech writers, just with some AI assistance. Tech writing seems especially vulnerable to people not really understanding the job (and then devaluing it, because "everybody can write" - which, no, if you'll excuse the slight self-promotion but it saves…

> it won't be a GOOD replacement

See my other comment - I'm afraid quality only matters if there is healthy competition which isn't the case for many verticals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46631038

Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

#36

Post by elcapitan »

duskdozer wrote: post #27
jraph wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if you acquire those skills yourself you shape your brain in a way that is definitely useful to you in many other aspects of life. Yep, and reading you will feel less boring. The uniform style of LLMs gets old fast and I wouldn't be surprised if it were a fundamental flaw due to how they work. And it's not even sure speed gains from using LLMs make up for the skill loss in the long term.

Seriously. It wasn't always this way, but now as soon I notice the LLM-isms in a chunk of text, I can feel my brain shut off.

Scanning for LLM garbage is now one of the first things I do when reading a larger piece of text that has been published post ChatGPT.

Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

#38

Post by nicbou »

Nextgrid wrote: post #32
nicbou wrote: post #26

I write documentation for a living. Although my output is writing, my job is observing, listening and understanding. I can only write well because I have an intimate understanding of my readers' problems, anxieties and confusion. This decides what I write about, and how to write about it. This sort of curation can only come from a thinking, feeling human being. I revise my local public transit guide every time I expe…

The problem is that so many things have been monopolized or oligopolized by equally-mediocre actors so that quality ultimately no longer matters because it's not like people have any options. You mention you've done work for public transit - well, if public transit documentation suddenly starts being terrible, will it lead to an immediate, noticeable drop in revenue? Doubt it. Firing the technical writer however has…

You are right. We are seeing a transition from the user as a customer to the user as a resource. It's almost like a cartel of shitty treatment.

I don't work for the public transit company; I introduce immigrants to Berlin's public transit. To answer to the broader question, good documentation is one of the many little things that affect how you feel about a company. The BVG clearly cares about that, because their marketing department is famously competent. Good documentation also means that fewer people will queue at their service centre and waste an employee's time. Documentation is the cheaper form of customer service.

Besides, how people feels about the public transit company does matter, because their funding is partly a political question. No one will come to defend a much-hated, customer-hostile service.

Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI

#40

Post by nicbou »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #31
nicbou wrote: post #26

I write documentation for a living. Although my output is writing, my job is observing, listening and understanding. I can only write well because I have an intimate understanding of my readers' problems, anxieties and confusion. This decides what I write about, and how to write about it. This sort of curation can only come from a thinking, feeling human being. I revise my local public transit guide every time I expe…

>insulting As as writer, you know this makes it seem emotional rather than factual? Anyway, I agree with what you are saying. I run a scientific blog that gets 250k-1M users per year, and AI has been terrible for article writing. I use AI for ideas on brainstorming and ideas for titles(which ends up being inspiration rather than copypaste).

My whole comment was about the need for a thinking, feeling human being. Is it surprising that I am emotional about it?
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