u/codecrackx15

As an independent contractor I outpaced the tech writing crew in the HQ location by 300% last year. They were forced to do work because I took the source of truth away from them and put it in the US location.

I was "rewarded" by being forced out of my contract into a full time position at a 24% loss in revenue. The dude I reported to left. Then the other dude I reported to (and frankly, bought into his vision) was fired before he had too much respect and power.

That allowed the leadership to bring in non-software people with old school manufacturing ideas that have nothing to do with releasing software (let alone knowing how a tech writer should operate). We don't want to hear about who is blocking you on the line.

We want to know where the new documents are! What do you mean you can't write up a process that you've never seen. We gave you that table of information.

Finally... Maybe you should use AI tools to do this stuff.

Never mind that I've been spending days cleaning up dev documents that used AI. An example... 3 sections (3 full opening pages) were essentially the same thing told different ways. I took all three sections and made one section out of them. For that... "It looked better when there was 3 sections there. It looked like we had more to show the customer." Really???!!!???

Then I start to notice how everyone now wants documentation the AI way.

Then the new manager, only been there a couple of months, had decided to bring in his tech writer hire, so we can nail down a style with AI.

Everything I've done is now being completely ignored because the mass turnover that either forced others out or they quit, and that has left this massive vacuum for new people to make the same mistakes that have been tried before. There's also no one to SME anything because the new people are learning things for the first time by trial and error or from documentation I was able to create.

I'm guessing that I won't last much longer just based on the MO of getting rid of people and the fact that they don't like the AI documentation to be fixed.

Has any upgraded from Technical Writing to Documentation Consultant?

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My motivation is to move out from under W2 full time. For 14 months I was basically consulting (1099/invoicing) and then the company wanted to get rid of contracting and hire people directly.

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For the last month it has been less than stellar with pushes to try to make me take over training and every aspect and nuance of every thing in the company that needs to be documented. I say no to most of it but I feel like the boundaries were better before going full time.

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Plus... I like saying I work for myself as well as the 1099 money was better.

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I figure I can leverage this into consulting. Finding clients may be rough but I've got glowing recommendations and a growing network to cultivate.

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Who else has done it?

I used to take a copy of everything I wrote for my portfolio.

I stopped doing that with this new UI. The eternal wizard. The devs made the UI based on a wizard that sticks around after the initial set up. You have to remember where things were in the wizard if you need to modify them.

The UI is nothing but a dev playground now. No oversight. Boxes one month, no boxes around headings the next, shaded boxes brought in for the following month... Nesting comes and goes depending on who likes it or not. No code freeze. No LTS.

I feel like the UI is so unprofessional now that I don't even want to show it off. It's no longer up to my portfolio standards.