Article View: alt.folklore.computers
Article #624783Re: The Peter Principle
From: Dan Espen
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2018 16:25
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2018 16:25
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2670 bytes
Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes: > On 2018-07-06, Gareth's Downstairs Computer > <headstone255.but.n...@yahoo.com> wrote: > >> Do incompetent computer programmers become technical authors? > > Nah, they go straight into management. Some do, some aren't so good at kissing up. I'm not going to condemn every Tech Writer that way, but that's one of many escape routes for failed computer programmers. Personally, I don't hold it against them. If they can do an okay job at writing and were only creating a mess at their attempts to code, more power to them. I can't remember any Tech Writers that I thought were doing a great job, but I was a pretty rare breed of programmer that enjoyed doing my own documentation. (And I think I did it well.) I once re-did a tool with a streamlined procedure and built in help. I then attacked the inch thick documentation and gave the tech writer the markup that changed the existing one inch to about a quarter inch. She refused to apply the updates. That led to an inevitable meeting. One of the things she proposed is reformatting so that the document contained a lot of white space. Fortunately, the ultimate outcome was that we stopped using tech writers. -- Dan Espen
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X-Received: by 2002:a24:17c4:: with SMTP id 187-v6mr3947041ith.17.1530894323755; Fri, 06 Jul 2018 09:25:23 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: alt.folklore.computers@googlegroups.com Received: by 2002:a6b:7515:: with SMTP id l21-v6ls1042883ioh.13.gmail; Fri, 06 Jul 2018 09:25:23 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:a6b:1647:: with SMTP id 68-v6mr814073iow.65.1530894323101; Fri, 06 Jul 2018 09:25:23 -0700 (PDT) Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!l67-v6ni4028itl.0!nntp.google.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Dan Espen <dan1...@gmail.com> Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: The Peter Principle Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2018 12:25:20 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 34 Message-ID: <pho55i$uce$1@dont-email.me> References: <pho0pp$s4$1@dont-email.me> <pho33o225k4@news4.newsguy.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Injection-Info: reader02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="3c47f9558f60999971fa43bd7c0b7e59"; logging-data="31118"; mail-complaints-to="ab...@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+Kf9JMCwIn+jP8o6wkfuYPMjfCdlR8P4g=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:gWgyYbFHFXP+9aczVStL968qv7w= Bytes: 2222 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit