Job Ad - WTF perhaps?
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"We need someone who can work as part of a development team,
alongside developers, Tester and user experience specialists to advise
on the GUI design and create a suite of product documentation to ensure
that users have all the information they need to be able to use one of
vc/.net products yuo will need knowledge of c++,vc++,.net and sql.
Please forward me your cv ASAP for immediate concideration! c++,vc++,
net, technical author"Let's be charitable (it's cocktail time here) and ignore the multiple spelling errors, punctuation errors, and capitalization errors.
What I'm wondering is
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In your experience, are they seriously expecting the technical author read the source code in order to write a user guide?
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Does that combination of languages cause you to smell a rat?
I promise I won't apply for this one.
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@GreyWolf said:
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In your experience, are they seriously expecting the technical author read the source code in order to write a user guide?
A good friend is a technical writer and while she doesn't read the source she is required to know the language and be somewhat familiar with it. So you see her with Visual C++ for dummies a lot. You don't need to be an experienced developer but you do need familiarity. So ... yes.
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@GreyWolf said:
Does that combination of languages cause you to smell a rat?
No, I don't smell a TunnelRat. I don't even smell a CPound.
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Indeed, we have this situation where I work. My group gets to install and configure the software from another group in our company. There's no documentation and we haven't been able to bribe or threaten them enough to get any. When trying to get our managers support (chain of command blech), he just suggests that we write the docs ourselves. Great. We have no access to the source code but he still thinks we can do it. So how do we write the docs? What are it's capabilities? Dunno. Any requirements or dependencies? No idea. Optional features available, and how to turn them on? Shrug.
So after we get it installed and configured via trial and error - aka candles and crystal balls - the customer asks for documentation in case they need to reinstall or whatever.... boy, do we look stupid. (Or I should say stupider)
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Isn't it the wet dream of every programmer to have a person making recommendations on the software who actually knows something about the capabilities of the language?
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@jetcitywoman said:
So after we get it installed and configured via trial and error - aka candles and crystal balls - the customer asks for documentation in case they need to reinstall or whatever.... boy, do we look stupid. (Or I should say stupider)
If your customer is in Germany, your management is going to look very stupid. If you don't deliver documentation along with your software, the customer can revoke the contract, i.e. demand all his money back. I found a court decision as recent as 2001 upholding this; there may be more recent ones.
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Huh, I wish. We're in the U.S where stupid is king. And the customer is apparently just a cost of doing business.
(Apologies to intelligent U.S. people out there. I'm very cynical lately.)
