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

passo.uno

211–220 of 278 posts

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

#211
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm with the grandparent comment. > But even if a PM cares about UX, How can a PM do their job if they don't *care* about UX? I mean... I know exactly happens because I've seen it more than once: the product slowly goes to shit. You get a bunch of PMs at various levels of seniority all pursuing separate goals, not collaborating, not actually working together to compose a coherent product; their production teams are a…

Oh, I agree completely with you, sorry if that wasn't clear. The PM should, must, care about UX. Still, they don't always do, or at least end up not caring eventually, for various reasons.

I'm just responding to this:

> what were your Product Managers doing in the first place if tech writer is finding out about usability problems

They might very well be doing their job of caring about UX, by using the available expertise to find problems.

It's a bit like saying (forgive the imperfect analogy): what are the developers doing talking about corner cases in the business logic, isn't the PM doing their job?

Yes, they are. They are using the combined expertise in the team.

Let's allow the PMs to rely on the knowledge and insights of other people, shall we? Their job already isn't easy, even (or especially) if they care.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "sma…

> If the AI-made documentation is only 50% of the quality AI-made documentation has 0% of the quality. As the OP pointed, AI can only document things that somebody already wrote down. That's no documentation at all.

I'd take AI generated slop reviewed by the person who created the system over tech writer babble any day of the week.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who was reading about some interesting but flawed system only to discover later that they were talking about MY OWN SOFTWARE!? (only half-joking here)

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

…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 That’s the logical fallacy anyone is going to be pushed to as soon as judging their individual worth in an intrinsically collective endeavor will happen. People in lowest incomes which would not be able to integrate in society without direct social funds will be seen as parasites by some which are wealthier, just like ultra rich will be considered parasite…

> People in lowest incomes which would not be able to integrate in society without direct social funds will be seen as parasites by some which are wealthier, just like ultra rich will be considered parasites by less wealthy people.

Your use of the word parasite, especially in the context of TFA, reminds me of the article James Michener wrote for Reader’s Digest in 1972 recounting President Nixon’s trip to China that year. In an anecdote from the end of the trip, Michener explained that Chinese officials gave parting gifts to the American journalists and their coordinating staffs covering the presidential trip. In the case of the radio/TV journalists, those staffs included various audio and video technicians.

As Michener told it, the officials’ gifts to the technicians were unexpectedly valuable and carefully chosen; but, when the newspaper and magazine writers in the group got their official gifts, they turned out to be relatively cheap trinkets. When one writer was bold enough to complain about this apparent disparity, a translator replied that the Chinese highly valued those who held technical skills (especially in view of the radical changes then going on in China’s attempt to rebuild itself).

“So what do you think about writers?” the complainer responded.

To that, the translator said darkly, “We consider writers to be parasites.”

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

#214
post #205

This was at #1 on the front page like an hour ago, and now after almost 100 new comments it’s off the front page at #40. What happened?

The answer could be: (1) users flagged it; (2) mods downweighted it; and/or (3) it set off the flamewar detector, a,k.a. the overheated discussion detector. In this case it was #3. That's one of the ways the system autocorrects. A sensational/indignant post attracts upvotes because that's how upvotes work (this is a weakness of the upvoting system), and this triggers an overheated discussion, which trips the flamewar…

Thanks for the explanation!

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

#215
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What difference does that make? If the cost of an engineer is zero, they can work on all kinds of nonsensical things that will never be used/consumed. It doesn't really matter as it doesn't cost anything.

I'm kinda baffled by your suggestion. That's just not how people or organizations run by people operate. Cost is not the only driver to demand.

> That's just not how people or organizations run by people operate.

Au contraire. It's not very often that the cost of labor actually drops to anywhere close to zero, but we have some examples. The elevator operator is a prime example. When it was costly to hire an operator we could only hire a few of them. Nowadays anyone who is willing to operate an elevator just has to show up and they automatically get the job.

If 1,000 engineers are worth having around, why not an infinite number of them, just like those working as elevator operators? Again, there is no cost in this hypothetical scenario.

> Cost is not the only driver to demand.

Technically true, but we're not talking about garbage here. Humans are always valuable to some degree, just not necessarily valuable enough when there is a cost to balance. But, again, we're talking about zero cost. I expect you are getting caught up in thinking about scenarios where labor still has a cost, perhaps confusing zero cost with zero payroll?

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

#216

Was anyone else confused by this title? I thought it was saying "a letter to those who fired tech writers because they were caught using AI," not "a letter to those who fired tech writers to replace them with AI." The whole article felt imprecise with language. To be honest, it made me feel LESS confident in human writers, not more. I was having flashbacks to all of the confusing docs I've encountered over the years,…

Given the steady parade of headlines on HN about workers supposedly being replaced by AI, it seems fairly self-evident that the first interpretation is the less likely of the two.

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

#217
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When it became cheaper to x did the quality go up? ...yes? It introduces a lower barrier to entry, so more low-quality things are also created, but it also increases the quality of the higher-tier as well. It's important to note that in FOSS, we (Or atleast...I) don't generally care who wrote the code, as long as it compiles and isn't malicious. This overlays with the original discussion...If I was paying you to rea…

I'd say that those high quality things that still exist do so despite of the higher volume of junk and they mostly exist because of other reasons/unique circumstances. (Individual pride, craftsmanship, people doing things as a hobby/without financial constraints etc) In a landscape where the market is mostly filled with junk by spending anything on "quality" any commercial product is essentially losing money.

>people doing things as a hobby/without financial constraints

Isn't this the exact point I was making...? I get you're arguing it's only a single factor, but I feel like the point still stands. More hobbyists, less financial constraints

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "sma…

> If the AI-made documentation is only 50% of the quality AI-made documentation has 0% of the quality. As the OP pointed, AI can only document things that somebody already wrote down. That's no documentation at all.

Most documentation is documenting things that somebody already wrote down in a different form.

The quality of AI-made documentation may be poor, but calling it 0% is just silly.

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

#219
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I agree with you, however:

One of the qualia of a product is cost. Another is contemporaneity.

If we put these together, we see a wide array of products which, rather than just being trash, hit a sweet spot for "up-to-date yet didn't break the wallet" and you end up with https://shein.com/

These are not thought of as the same people that subscribe to the Buy It For Life subreddit, but some may use Shein for a club shirt and BIFL for an espresso machine. They make a choice.

What's more, a “Technivorm Moccamaster” costs 10x a “Mr. Coffee” because of the build and repairability, not because of the coffee. (Amazon Basics cost ½ that again.)

Maybe Fashion was the original SEO hack. Whoever came up with the phrase "gone out of style" wrought much of this.

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

#220
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 think you fundamentally misunderstand how the technology can be used well.

If you are in charge of a herd of bots that are following a prompt scaffolding in order to automate a work product that meets 90% of the quality of the pure human output you produce, that gives you a starting point with only 10% of the work to be done. I'd hazard a guess that if you spent 6 months crafting a prompt scaffold you could reach 99% of your own quality, with the odd outliers here and there.

The first person or company to do that well then has an automation framework, and they can suddenly achieve 10x or 100x the output with a nominal cost in operating the AI. They can ensure that each and every work product is lovingly finished and artisanally handcrafted , go the extra mile, and maybe reach 8x to 80x output with a QA loss.

In order to do 8-80x one expert's output, you might need to hire a bunch of people to do segmented tasks - some to do interviews, build relationships, the other things that require in person socialization. Or, maybe AI can identify commonalities and do good enough at predicting a plausible enough model that anyone paying for what you do will be satisfied with the 90% as good AI product but without that personal touch, and as soon as an AI centric firm decides to eat your lunch, your human oriented edge is gone. If it comes down to beancounting, AI is going to win.

I don't think there's anything that doesn't require physically interacting with the world that isn't susceptible to significant disruption, from augmentation to outright replacement, depending on the cost of tailoring a model to the tasks.

For valuable enough work, companies will pay the millions to fine-tune frontier models, either through OpenAI or open source options like Kimi or DeepSeek, and those models will give those companies an edge over the competition.

I love human customer service, especially when it's someone who's competent, enjoys what they do, and actually gives a shit. Those people are awesome - but they're not necessary, and the cost of not having them is less than the cost of maintaining a big team of customer service agents. If a vendor tells a big company that they can replace 40k service agents being paid ~$3.2 billion a year with a few datacenters, custom AI models, AI IT and Support staff, and totally automated customer service system for $100 million a year, that might well be worth the reputation hit and savings. None of the AI will be able to match the top 20% of human service agents in the edge cases, and there will be a new set of problems that come from customer and AI conflict, etc.

Even so. If your job depends on processing information - even information in a deeply human, emotional, psychologically nuanced and complex context - it's susceptible to automation, because the ones with the money are happy with "good enough." AI just has to be good enough to make more money than the human work it supplants, and frontier models are far past that threshold.

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