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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

#121

Post by theptip »

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…

Counterpoint - I think it’s going to become much easier for hobbyists and motivated small companies to make bigger projects. I expect to see more OSS, more competition, and eventually better quality-per-price (probably even better absolute quality at the “$0 / sell your data” tier).

Sure, the megacorps may start rotting from the inside out, but we already see a retrenchment to smaller private communities, and if more of the benefits of the big platforms trickle down, why wouldn’t that continue?

Nicbou, do you see AI as increasing your personal output? If it lets enthusiastic individuals get more leverage on good causes then I still have hope.

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

#122

Post by dxdm »

throwaw12 wrote: post #72
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.

> 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

Realistically, PMs incentives are often aligned elsewhere.

But even if a PM cares about UX, they are often not in a good position to spot problems with designs and flows they are closely involved in and intimately familiar with.

Having someone else with a special perspective can be very useful, even if their job provides other beneficial functions, too. Using this "resource" is the job of the PM.

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

#123

Post by ajuc »

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…

Replacement will be 80% worse, that's fine. As long as it's 90% cheaper.

See Duolingo :)

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

#124

Post by psychoslave »

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…

>it's not like people have any options.

That’s one way to frame it. An other one is, sometime people are stuck in a situation where all options that come to their mind have repulsive consequences.

As always some consequences are deemed more immediate, and other will seem remoter. And often the incentives can be quite at odd between expectations in the short/long terms.

>this sucks and I'm gonna build a better one in a weekend

Hey, this is me looking at the world this morning. Bear with me, the bright new harmonious world should be there on Monday. ;)

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

#125

Post by fainpul »

publicdebates wrote: post #94
alameenpd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His other comment in this thread is also a clone of someone else's comment.

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

#126

Post by chiefalchemist »

LtWorf wrote: post #113
chiefalchemist wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't write for a living, but I do consider communication / communicating a hobby of sorts. My observations - that perhaps you can confirm or refute - are: - Most people don't communicate as thoroughly and complete - written and verbal - as they think they do. Very often there is what I call "assumptive communication". That is, sender's ambiguity that's resolved by the receiver making assumptions about what was REA…

LLMs are good at writing long pages of meaningless words. If you have a number of pages to turn in with your writing assignment and you've only written 3 sentences they will help you produce a low quality result that will pass the requirements.

Low-quality is relative. LLMs' low-quality is most people's above-average. The fact the copy - either way - is likely to go through some sort of copy-by-committee process makes the case for LLMs even stronger (i.e., why waste your time). Not always, but quite often.

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

#127

Post by jillesvangurp »

I'm currently in the middle of restructuring our website. 95% of the work is being done by codex. That includes content writing, design work, implementation work, etc. But it's a lot of work for me because I am critical about things like wording/phrasing and not hallucinating things we don't actually do. That's actually a lot of work. But it's editorial work and not writing work or programming work. But it's doing a pretty great job. Having a static website with a site generator means I can do lots of changes quickly via agentic coding.

My advise to tech writers would be to get really good at directing and orchestrating AI tools to do the heavy lifting of producing documentation. If you are stuck using content management systems or word processors, consider adopting a more code centric workflow. The AI tools can work with those a lot better. And you can't afford to be doing things manually that an AI does faster and better. Your value is making sure the right documentation gets written and produced correctly; correcting things that need correcting/perfecting. It's not in doing everything manually; you need to cherry pick where your skills still add value.

Another bit of insight is that a lot of technical documentation now has AIs as the main consumer. A friend of mine who runs a small SAAS service has been complaining that nobody actually reads his documentation (which is pretty decent) and instead relies on LLMs to do that for them. The more documentation you have, the less people will read all of it. Or any of it.

But you still need documentation. It's easier than ever to produce it. The quality standards for that documentation are high and increasing. There are very few excuses for not having great documentation.

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

#128

Post by marcosdumay »

InMice wrote: post #22

Is it expected that LLMs will continue to improve over time? All the recent articles like this one just seem to describe this technology's faults as fixed and permanent. Basically saying "turn around and go no further". Honestly asking because their arguments seem to be dependent on improvement never happening and never overcoming any faults. It feels shortsighted.

> Is it expected that LLMs will continue to improve over time?

By whom?

Your expectations aren't the same everybody has.

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

#129

Post by samiv »

theptip wrote: post #121
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…

Counterpoint - I think it’s going to become much easier for hobbyists and motivated small companies to make bigger projects. I expect to see more OSS, more competition, and eventually better quality-per-price (probably even better absolute quality at the “$0 / sell your data” tier). Sure, the megacorps may start rotting from the inside out, but we already see a retrenchment to smaller private communities, and if more…

When it became cheaper to publish text did the quality go up?

When it became cheaper to make games did the quality go up?

When it became cheaper to mass produce X (sneakers, tshirts, anything really) did the quality go up?

It's a world that is made of an abundance of trash. The volume of low quality production saturates the market and drowns out whatever high quality things still remain. In such a world you're just better of reallocating your resources from the production quality towards the the shouting match of marketing and try to win by finding ways to be more visible than the others. (SEO hacking etc shenanigans)

When you drive down the cost of doing something to zero you you also effectively destroy the economy based around that thing. Like online print, basically nobody can make a living with focusing on publishing news or articles but alternative revenue streams (ads) are needed. Same for games too.

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

#130

Post by the_af »

stackedinserter wrote: post #98

> 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 pumpin…

> Why should I hire a dedicated writer if I have people with better understanding of the system?

Many engineers are terrible at documentation, not just because they find it boring or cannot put it into words (that's the part an LLM could actually help with) but because they cannot tell what to document, what is unneeded detail, how best to address the target audience (or what is the profile of the target audience to begin with; something you can tell an LLM but which it cannot find on its own), etc, etc. The Fine Article goes into these nuances; it's the whole point of it.

> "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"

Air travel is a well-known thing, surely different from your bespoke product.

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