[flagged]
are you talking about the hashes (##, ###) etc in the subheadings? I think that's an intentional design thing, a bit of a nod to the back row, if you will.
To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
71–80 of 278 posts
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#72The best tech writers I have worked with don’t merely document the product. They act as stand-ins for actual users and will flag all sorts of usability problems. They are invaluable. The best also know how to start with almost no engineering docs and to extract what they need from 1-1 sit down interviews with engineering SMEs. I don’t see AI doing either of those things well.
> They act as stand-ins for actual users and will flag all sorts of usability problems
True, but it raises another question, what were your Product Managers doing in the first place if tech writer is finding out about usability problems
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#73The best tech writers I have worked with don’t merely document the product. They act as stand-ins for actual users and will flag all sorts of usability problems. They are invaluable. The best also know how to start with almost no engineering docs and to extract what they need from 1-1 sit down interviews with engineering SMEs. I don’t see AI doing either of those things well.
> I don’t see AI doing either of those things well. I think I agree, at least in the current state of AI, but can't quite put my finger on what exactly it's missing. I did have some limited success with getting Claude Code to go through tutorials (actually implementing each step as they go), and then having it iterate on the tutorial, but it's definitely not at the level of a human tech writer. Would you be willing t…
> but can't quite put my finger on what exactly it's missing.
We have to ask AI questions for it to do things. We have to probe it. A human knows things and will probe others, unprompted. It's why we are actually intelligent and the LLM is a word guesser.
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
The person you're replying to is obviously and explicitly aware that that is another scenario, and the whole point of their comment was to argue against it and explain why they think something else is more likely. Merely restating the thing they were already arguing against adds nothing to the discussion.
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#75Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#76Nice read after the earlier post saying fire all your tech writers. Good post.
One thing to add is that the LLM doesn't know what it can't see. It just amplifies what is there. Assumed knowledge is quite common with developers and their own code. Or the more common "it works on my machine" because something is set outside of the code environment.
Sadly other fields are experiencing the same issue of someone outside their field saying AI can straight up replace them.
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#77I 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…
sounds like a bunch of agents can do a good amount of this. A high horse isn’t necessary
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t see AI doing either of those things well. I think I agree, at least in the current state of AI, but can't quite put my finger on what exactly it's missing. I did have some limited success with getting Claude Code to go through tutorials (actually implementing each step as they go), and then having it iterate on the tutorial, but it's definitely not at the level of a human tech writer. Would you be willing t…
I don’t know that it can be well-defined. It might be asking something akin to “What makes something human?” For usability, one needs a sense of what defines “user pain” and what defines “reasonableness.” No product is perfect. They all have usability problems at some level. The best usability experts, and tech writers who do this well, have an intuition for user priorities and an ability to identify and differentiat…
Thinking about this some more now, I can imagine a future in which we'll see more and more software for which AI agents are the main users.
For tech documentation, I suppose that AI agents would mainly benefit from Skills files managed as part of the tool's repo, and I absolutely do imagine future AI agents being set up (e.g. as part of their AGENTS.md) to propose PRs to these Skills as they use the tools. And I'm wondering whether AI agents might end up with different usability concerns and pain-points from those that we have.
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#79Documentation needs to be tested.
Someone has to turn off their brain completely and just follow the instructions as-is. Then log the locations where the documentation wasn't clear enough or assumed some knowledge that wasn't given in the docs.
Re: To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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?
Emotion takes away from the idea. Instead of thinking: "Oh this is a great point. There is immense economic value here."
It becomes: This person is fearful of their job and used feeling to justify their belief.