The hard, sad truth about HR departments and Technical Writers

I want to get something off my chest. It's something that has been bugging me since I started out as a Technical Writer way back in 1995.

HR department heads, head-hunters, recruiters, and potential employers listen carefully, 'cause I'm gonna say this once (which may not be enough for some of you):

If Programmers or Engineers were ever able to create a coherent sentence in English that someone other than a Programmer or Engineer could understand, then there would never have been a need to create the job of Technical Writer.

Programmers can't even document their own code reliably. Engineers try to "reinvent the wheel" every time they design something and also try to make it so complicated other Engineers can't decipher the concept and steal it. In spite of all of this, you expect them to write in a language they don't understand (whether born to it or not)? Get a grip.

Yes, there are those writers that can understand the principles of programming and some others that can even get a general sense of what the code they are reading might be expected to do (whether it actually does that thing or not). There are other writers who can take a schematic drawing and quickly see what the functions of the board should be. However, in neither case should a writer be expected to correct programming mistakes, write code from scratch, or redraw a schematic.

Programmers or Engineers who think, or have convinced others, they are writers should be examined professionally. Either they weren't good Programmers or Engineers to begin with and were trying desperately to keep working, or the person hiring (or, Heaven forfend, publishing) them had less skill in the language than that Programmer or Engineer.

A proper Technical Writer must first be a master of whatever language they will be required to write in. While someone might have some facility with Japanese because they learned quite a bit of it in college, they should never be required to translate works into Japanese or write a Japanese document from scratch. Likewise for the reverse. [For examples of poor Japanese to English translations, see www.engrish.com. For a complete definition of Engrish, see Cramster - Definition of Engrish] With the help of a counterpart in Japan who is likewise skilled in Japanese and partially skilled in English, a good translation is possible. This will be true for any language transition.

Marketing "gurus" should never be allowed to design or "suggest" drawings for technical documentation. For reasons why, see the Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness. (Warning: some entry comments in the Hall are rather crude.) A Technical Writer should never be asked to submit marketing ideas or create detailed schematics. Proper schematics are the province of Engineers and white papers are the province of professional liars ...oops... Marketing agents. A Technical Writer may, perhaps, be employed to render such things into a form more easily understood (and viewable) or into proper English through an editing process. It might even be conceivable for a Writer to create simple, line-drawing type schematics for gross layouts of major systems (box to box flow) including undetailed representations of the pieces of hardware used.

In short, notwithstanding the recent advent of XML and SGML, and the odd need for an HTML page or two, real Technical Writers do not pretend to code, design integrated circuits, or create complicated integrated hardware systems. So, in fairness, real Programmers and real Engineers should not pretend to write sentences.

[update 08-02-08]
Hey, Google! I don't appreciate the extra span, and layer tags. Don't do it again.