radical revamping of techpubs

[John Hedtke]

Just to throw my opinion on the fire as well, yeah, I'd say it's time to 
make like a tree and get outa there.  :)

It's the same old leftovers we've seen a zillion times before.  The fact 
that the developers are not writers >nor< native English speakers just adds 
a comic twist to the incompetence of the people who made such a boneheaded 
decision.  I'm sure that there will be a certain amount of smugness about 
how original they've been, but you may quote me by saying what I always say 
whenever I hear this kind of rank stupidity coming from some Richard 
Cranium type:  "Aye, we've steered onto the rocks.  I ~told~ you it was bad 
luck to steer straight onto the rocks!"

Care to tell us the name of the company so we can short their stock?  :)

Yours truly,

John Hedtke
Author/Consultant/Contract Writer
www.hedtke.com <-- website
Region 7 Director, STC
541-685-5000 (office landline)
541-554-2189 (cell)
john at hedtke.com (primary email)
johnhedtke at aol.com (secondary email)

At 11:47 AM 10/10/2007, mulholland4 wrote:
>Hi,
>I would like to see what the group thinks of this scenario for writing
>documentation within a company?
>
>1. Remove all existing tech writing staff from techpubs.
>2. Replace these with software developers and specialists who know the
>software inside out and get them to write all of the documentation. These
>would now be known as Developer-techwriters. (It should be noted that none
>of these people has English as a first language, despite this being the
>primary market for the documentation.)
>3. Hire editing staff to edit only the language and grammar of the documents
>written by the software specialists.
>
>The reasoning behind this scenario is; that this saves money as the
>developers know the software, and it is really cheap to get university
>students to come in and edit.
>
>I won't make comments on this just now as i'm sure there are many of us who
>just want to run screaming!