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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

#261

Post by frm88 »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #255
theletterf wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty boring, but to each their own. Continue enjoying boredom, my lad. :)

Let me explain what happened here, because this is very human and very stupid, and therefore completely understandable. We looked at documentation and thought, Ah yes. Words. And then we looked at AI and thought, Oh wow. It makes words. And then we did what humans always do when two things look vaguely similar: we declared victory and went to lunch. That’s it. That’s the whole mistake. Documentation looks like writin…

Brilliant. Thank you.

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

#262

Post by fatherwavelet »

rtgfhyuj wrote: post #77
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…

sounds like a bunch of agents can do a good amount of this. A high horse isn’t necessary

There is just much denial of all this right now.

I could say I make my living with various forms of communication.

I am not worried about AI replacing me 1:1 communication wise. What is going to happen is the structure around me that gives my current communication skill set value is going to change so much and be optimized to a degree that my current skill set is no longer going to have much value in the new structures that arise. I will have to figure out how to fit into these new structures and it surely won't be doing the same thing I am doing now. That seems so obvious.

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

#263

Post by chiefalchemist »

LtWorf wrote: post #253
chiefalchemist wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a function of the prompt. The tool only performs as well as you're able to instruct it.

You expect people who cannot write to become skilled writers to instruct llms?

No. I'm expecting you not to blame the screwdriver because people decide to use it as a hammer.

But to your point, you might not like the slop, but that slop, sadly, is still better than what it would have been otherwise.

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

#264

Post by tech_tuna »

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.

Agreed, they overlap with QA engineers and Product Managers, with some level of technical skill on their own e.g. they might know Python pretty well.

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

#265

Post by [deleted] »

frm88 wrote: post #261
threethirtytwo wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me explain what happened here, because this is very human and very stupid, and therefore completely understandable. We looked at documentation and thought, Ah yes. Words. And then we looked at AI and thought, Oh wow. It makes words. And then we did what humans always do when two things look vaguely similar: we declared victory and went to lunch. That’s it. That’s the whole mistake. Documentation looks like writin…

Brilliant. Thank you.

[deleted]

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

#266

Post by threethirtytwo »

frm88 wrote: post #261
threethirtytwo wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me explain what happened here, because this is very human and very stupid, and therefore completely understandable. We looked at documentation and thought, Ah yes. Words. And then we looked at AI and thought, Oh wow. It makes words. And then we did what humans always do when two things look vaguely similar: we declared victory and went to lunch. That’s it. That’s the whole mistake. Documentation looks like writin…

Brilliant. Thank you.

Thank chatgpt lol.

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

#267

Post by yawnxyz »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #231
glemion43 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I let it generate README.md files for my projects and they look awesome and they read nice and are theoretically helpful for everyone new. And LLM are really good in reading your docs to help someone. So I make sure to add more concrete examples into them

Also, one pet peeve of mine is when there are emojis in semi-serious writing. ChatGPT really made the practice of putting emojis everywhere explode.

tell it to: "Output documentation in the style of MDN" and it looks way more professional

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

#268

Post by gettingoverit »

Not their manager here, but

We fired our professional tech writers. They've been using AI all the time (with horrible results), and were basically incapable of tech writing without it at all.

Looking for tech writers on the market is nigh impossible. Even people with decent portfolio tend to be very bad at their job.

The only good option now is to hire a software developer to do the writing. There's a decent amount of them who have experience with that. Obviously devs won't like to have it on their CV instead of proper development.

Honestly this is a catastrophe. If you're firing a tech writer that writes something even semi-decent, you're ruining your business.

Reminder: AI is only good at things that existed in bulk during its training, such as README files, configs that always look the same (package.json, dockerfile), and tests. The documentation for your product, or for products of that kind, or even in general, either never existed, or not such a commodity to have AI generate it well.

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

#269

Post by theletterf »

gettingoverit wrote: post #268

Not their manager here, but We fired our professional tech writers. They've been using AI all the time (with horrible results), and were basically incapable of tech writing without it at all. Looking for tech writers on the market is nigh impossible. Even people with decent portfolio tend to be very bad at their job. The only good option now is to hire a software developer to do the writing. There's a decent amount o…

So you're generalizing from your bad experience and your less than optimal recruitment process.

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

#270

Post by LtWorf »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #263
LtWorf wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect people who cannot write to become skilled writers to instruct llms?

No. I'm expecting you not to blame the screwdriver because people decide to use it as a hammer. But to your point, you might not like the slop, but that slop, sadly, is still better than what it would have been otherwise.

It's just longer, it won't carry more information.
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