Strategy, Michael Porter wrote, is choosing what not to do. Now, the problem with knowledge work such as the one tech writers carry out is that it’s full of things that seem to require equally important, time-consuming decisions. While engaging in lengthy disquisitions might be alluring, endlessly combing the Zen garden of theory doesn’t solve the basic problem of the docs hierarchy of needs, which is writing the damn docs and making sure they’re accurate and useful.| passo.uno
I’m a terrible user of documentation. I tend to consume docs in a hurry, reading diagonally, Control+Fing my way to things. I generally mistreat the interface of docs until I obtain something resembling an answer. I do this because I’ve little time and I need to fix issues fast. I love examples I can copy and paste. I’ve little patience for verbose documentation and even less for docs that look like they were written without care or skill. I’m not only bothered by inaccuracy, but also...| passo.uno
Soon after publishing Tips for hiring your first technical writer, some readers kindly suggested to follow up with a post covering the previous step in the tech writing journey, that is, the realization that one needs a technical writer. As there seems to be a strong appetite for this kind of content, I’m going to spend some words to list what I think are the most egregious signs that your team, company, or product requires a technical writer (or a tech writing team).| passo.uno
I’m not only a technical writer and an avid collector of old manuals: I’m also a gamer. One of the bits I always enjoyed about video games were the manuals, from the slim booklets that accompanied arcade games to the hefty guides that helped build virtual worlds in our heads while we waited for a few kilobytes to load in memory. Those manuals still hold valuable lessons for the software documentation we write today.| passo.uno
A recurring question from people entering the tech writing profession is “Should I learn to code?”. This query has become hugely popular in the docs-as-code age, where writers and developers live in the same DevOps trenches, eating the same CI/CD rations and publishing docs using broken tools that often lack maintainers. My answer is “These are not the learnings you’re looking for.”| passo.uno
Every once in a while, startup founders and managers decide that they need someone to create and manage their docs –perhaps after reading this letter. Some contact me to understand how they should go about hiring for a tech writer. Since I’ve already published tips for job hunting as a tech writer, I thought it would be a good idea to write down some advice for the other side, too. Here are my recommendations for software companies wanting to hire their first technical writer.| passo.uno
I’ve been working as a writer in tech for more than 15 years now. During this time I’ve been at five different companies. I’ve done tons of interviews and got more than a dozen offers, some of which I ended up accepting. It didn’t always start with clicking “Apply”; it didn’t always go as expected. Whatever the outcome, though, I learned a thing or two which I’d like to share.| passo.uno
Should docs stay with the code they document? Or should they rather be in a separate repo, fully managed by tech writers and docs site developers? The matter of where docs should be living when doing docs-as-code isn’t easy to untangle. With the following topologies I’ve tried to describe situations I’ve found myself into or seen in the wild. Each has its own pros and cons, though only the last is my favorite.| passo.uno