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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

#91

Post by richardw »

falcor84 wrote: post #30
drob518 wrote: post #23

The 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…

It has no sense of truth or value. You need to check what it wrote and you need to tell it what’s important to a human. It’ll give you the average, but misses the insight.

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

#92

Post by rkomorn »

nicbou wrote: post #38
Nextgrid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mar…

> We are seeing a transition from the user as a customer to the user as a resource.

I'd argue that this started 30 years ago when automated phone trees started replacing the first line of workers and making users figure out how to navigate where they needed to in order to get the service they needed.

I can't remember if chat bots or "knowledge bases" came first, but that was the next step in the "figure it out yourself" attitude corporations adopted (under the guise of empowering users to "self help").

Then we started letting corporations use the "we're just too big to actually have humans deal with things" excuse (eg online moderation, or paid services with basically no support).

And all these companies look at each other to see who can lower the bar next and jump on the bandwagon.

It's one of my "favorite" rants, I guess.

The way I see this next era going is that it's basically going to become exclusively the users' responsibility to figure out how to talk to the bots to solve any issue they have.

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

#93

Post by rsynnott »

DeepSeaTortoise wrote: post #88
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…

Why shouldn't AI be able to sufficiently model all of this in the not far future? Why shouldn't have it have sufficient access to new data and sensors to be able to collect information on its own, or at least the system that feeds it? Not from a moral perspective of course, but the technical possibility. And the overton window has shifted already so far, the moral aspect might align soon, too. IMO there is an entirel…

> Accept full responsibility and liability for any damages caused by their model making wrong decisions and either not meeting a minimum quality standard or the agreed upon quality.

That's not sufficient, at least from the likes of OpenAI, because, realistically, that's a liability that would go away in bankruptcy. Companies aren't going to want to depend on it. People _might_ take, say, _Microsoft_ up on that, but Microsoft wouldn't offer it.

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

#94

Post by publicdebates »

alameenpd wrote: post #85
apercu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

It’s almost like they are a professional writer

Word for word, 53 minutes later? Why?

I have exactly 1 guess but am waiting to say it.

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

#95

Post by theletterf »

EagnaIonat wrote: post #76

Nice 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 t…

> after the earlier post saying fire all your tech writers

What post was that?

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

#97

Post by CuriouslyC »

falcor84 wrote: post #30
drob518 wrote: post #23

The 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…

Current AI writing is slightly incoherent. It's subtle, but the high level flow/direction of the writing meanders so things will sometimes seem a bit non-sequitur or contradictory.

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

#98

Post by stackedinserter »

> So here’s my request for you: Reconsider

Why should I hire a dedicated writer if I have people with better understanding of the system? Also worth noting that like in any profession the most writers are... mediocre. Especially when you hire someone on contract. I had mostly bad experience with them in past. They happily charge $1000 for a few pages of garbage that is not even LLM-quality. No creativity, just pumping out words.

I can chip in like $20 to pay some "good writer" that "observes, listens and understands" for writing documentation on something and compare it with LLM-made one.

"Write a manual for air travel for someone who never flew. Cover topics like buying a ticket, preparing for travel, getting to airport, doing things in the airport, etc"

Let's compare!

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

#100

Post by rasmus-kirk »

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…

Spot on! I think LLM's can help greatly in quickly putting that knowledge in writing, including using it to review written materials for hidden prerequisite assumptions that readers might not be aware of that. It can also help newer hires in how to write and more clearly. LLM's are clearly useful in increasing productivity, but management that think that they even close to ready to replace large sections of practically any workforce are delusional.
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