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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

#61

Post by FeteCommuniste »

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 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.

Exactly. If the AI-made documentation is only 50% of the quality but can be produced for 10% of the price, well, we all know what the "smart" business move is.

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

#62

Post by pachorizons »

block_dagger wrote: post #57
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…

…says every charlatan who wanted to keep their position. I’m not saying you’re a charlatan but you are likely overestimating your own contributions at work. Your comment about feeding on data - AI can read faster than you can by orders of magnitude. You cannot compete.

"you are likely overestimating your own contributions at work"

Based on what? Your own zero-evidence speculation? How is this anything other than arrogant punting? For sure we know that the point was something other than how fast the author reads compared to an AI, so what are we left with here?

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

#64

Post by FeteCommuniste »

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…

> AI might replace tech writers (just like it might replace anyone), but it won't be a GOOD replacement.

[insert Pawn Stars meme]: "GOOD docs? Sorry, best I can do is 'slightly better than useless.'"

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

#65

Post by bell-cot »

apercu wrote: post #43
nicbou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mar…

“It's almost like a cartel of shitty treatment.” Thank you. I love it when someone poetically captures a feeling I’ve been having so succinctly.

Enshittificartelization?

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

#66

Post by prakashn27 »

I have not fired a technical writer, but writing documentation that understands and maintains users focus is hard even with llm. I am trying to write documentation for my start up and it is harder than I expected even with llm.

Kudos to all technical writer who made my job as software engineer easier.

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

#68

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

aurareturn wrote: post #12
theletterf wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. Could the same be said for engineers?

Yes. That could be said for engineers as well. If the business can no longer justify 5 engineers, then they might only have 1. I've always said that we won't need fewer software developers with AI. It's just that each company will require fewer developers but there will be more companies. IE: 2022: 100 companies employ 10,000 engineers 2026: 1000 companies employ 10,000 engineers The net result is the same for emplyo…

There's another scenario... 100 companies employ 1000 engineers

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

#69

Post by gausswho »

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…

I like the cut o' your jib. The local public transit guide you write, is that for work or for your own knowledge base? I'm curious how you're organizing this while keeping the human touch.

I'm exploring ways to organize my Obsidian vault such that it can be shared with friends, but not the whole Internet (and its bots). I'm extracting value out the curation I've done, but I'd like to share with others.

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

#70

Post by throwaw12 »

I will share my experience, hopefully it answers some questions to tech writers.

I was terrible writer, but we had to write good docs and make it easy for our customers to integrate with our products. So, I prepared the context to our tech writers and they have created nice documentation pages.

The cycle was (reasonably takes 1 week, depending on tech writer workload):

    1. prepare context
    2. create ticket to tech writers, wait until they respond
    3. discuss messaging over the call
    4. couple days later I get first draft
    5. iterate on draft, then finally publish it
Today its different:

    1. I prepare all the context and style guide, then feed them into LLM.
    1.1. context is extracted directly from code by coding agents 
    2. I proofread it and 97% of cases accept it, because it follows the style guide and mostly transforms my context correctly into customer consumable content
    3. Done. less than 20 minutes
Tech writers were doing amazing job of course, but I can get 90-95% quality in 1% of the time spend for that work.
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