Welcome back for another chinwag! This week, we were lucky enough to catch up with our friend and Bárd colleague, Ruvane, for a chat about his work and his more than twenty-year experience of being a remote, contract technical writer. So, sit back and relax with your favourite snack and beverage combination while we get to know one of our most experienced writers.
Interviewer: Hi Ruvane, great to see you. It’s been ages since we got to have a good chat.
Ruvane: Hi Áine, great to see you too. Yes, it has been a long time since we last spoke.
Interviewer: So Ruvane, I usually start these chats by asking everyone to tell us where they are at the moment.
Ruvane: Ok, right, well, I’m just outside Jerusalem.
You know, I’m working where I choose to actually be, rather than in a city block or in another town, so when I grab a cup of tea and I step outside my back door, I have beautiful scenery and beautiful weather, which is not what you usually get when you take a job in town.
Interviewer: That’s so true. And were you always a technical writer, were you born this way? (laughs).
Ruvane: (laughs) No, No I started out life as an electrical engineer… light current, so electronics engineer. Spent most of my life in high tech, in the computer field in one way or another. And then… then probably just over twenty years ago, mainly when the dot com thing started hitting the industry… I was freelancing at the time, doing contract work, which I liked anyway because I have always liked contracting and remote work. And then a number of companies said to me, ‘you have a very technical background, why don’t you do some technical writing’, and I did a course and I enjoyed it. It’s a combination for me, using my technical background, which makes it easier to write because I really think you need to understand what you’re writing rather than being – I don’t know what you’d call it – taking some notes from an engineer and cleaning up the English.
It’s much easier if you can understand what’s going on and work things out on your own and then explain that to people.
I always preferred working remotely, too many little niggles going on at work and I didn’t like it. When I finally got to work full time, remotely, it was great.
People ask ‘How are you managing in the lockdown?’ Well, I don’t really notice… I’m ok! I love remote writing, I think a lot of it has to do with a person’s character. I’ve spoken to a lot of people over the past 18 months about this, and they ask, ‘how on earth do you manage? What do you do? Where do you go to get out and see people?’ I say, ‘when I need to, I go out and see people’. ‘I don’t have to see people all the time’. I’m quite happy to do my work, not having to see people all the time, so it suits me. I’m quite happy to sit down for whatever – whether it’s from 8am until 4pm, or whatever it is, or 10am until 5pm at night. Because it’s remote working, often with people from around the world, nobody really cares too much if you’re there from 9 to 5. So if I do the work and I do the hours, nobody is particularly worried about it.
On the other side, it requires a bit of…I need to do my hours today or, I need to finish this project by tomorrow, and that requires a fair amount of self discipline.
Interviewer: And what is your role in , Ruvane?
Ruvane: I am working at their enterprise help centre. There’s another aspect to it. We have an expression in Hebrew that doesn’t translate well but you’ll probably understand, it’s called Rosh Gadol, it means ‘a large head’. It’s not what you think, what it means…it’s particularly used for an employee where they say, ‘I don’t know how to do that’ or ‘that’s not my job’ where you put your head down and say ‘that’s not really any of my business’. Rosh gadol is the opposite of that. If I come up against an issue, I need to solve it. If I have to go and talk to someone in development, or in marketing, or in sales, that’s what you have to do, and you get on and do it.
Not every company appreciates that, some get very upset. You might not always go through the right channels but you get the job done. With remote or freelance working, that comes into it a lot. You can’t have an attitude of ‘well I haven’t done that before’ or ‘that’s not really part of my job spec’. If something’s missing, or you don’t understand something, or there’s an issue with a piece of the software, it’s easy to pass that off to someone else but you can’t do that with remote working because, simply, it won’t get done, or it won’t get done properly, so you need to be very proactive…go and find out how it works, find out the specs, just go and do it. That’s it.
Interviewer: That’s so true and something I have heard from the other writers in this series. As a technical writer, you must be the type of person who says ‘I have to get to the bottom of this. I might not know where to go to find the answer, but part of my work is to figure that out and to locate this answer no matter what’.
Ruvane: Yes, yes. In , this can be a process. You can go through half a dozen people, not because they’re not being helpful, in I must say, out of so many thousands of people, they are really good and very helpful and patient. But because of the size of the place, because there are so many tentacles and sub-branches, you may have to skip from one person to another before you get to who you need. But if you don’t push yourself to say ‘I need to find an answer, I need to find the parameters, etc, you just won’t find it. Again, it comes down to a person’s nature. If you are too timid, it just won’t happen.
Interviewer: Yes, tenacity is something technical writers, particularly remote technical writers, must have in abundance. And there’s that curiosity too. When you do like what you do, you really want to find the answer. In my case, not having a technical background prior to becoming a technical writer, I have found myself really stuck at times. But I try to engage that tenacity and stick with a problem to find the answer. In your case you have that perfect blend of technical know-how and the tenacity to find the solution.
Ruvane: No matter what technical background you have, though, you can’t be an expert on everything. There’s always that new product, a new whatever and there’s no way that you can know all the answers, it’s just not possible and so you have to dig and that’s just part of the job
Interviewer: What about the other project you work on, is that completely different in terms of output and expectation?
Ruvane: Yes, quite different. This one is a new startup. There was another writer working on this with me but she has moved on, so I’m the lone writer, so in a lot of ways it’s the polar opposite of . I know the few other writers that I work with every day and I’m still learning whom to ask questions, but there are huge systems in place everywhere. In , there are systems everywhere…they have their own CMS…every single item is taken care of, down to the technology I use every day. With my second project, it is the exact opposite. It’s more experimental, they are developing the guides as they go.
Interviewer: You are the guide!
Ruvane: (Laughs) Yes, I suggest the way I think it should be done and there is a three-way discussion with our Docforce PM and the client. They make the final decision.
Interviewer: There aren’t that many lines of work where you would have that kind of contrast. It is a particular quirk of technical writing, especially remote technical writing.
Ruvane: Yes, and this can be tough, and it can be great. It’s a challenge. If someone is looking to go into the office and do the same eight hours, with the same work as they did yesterday, it’s not likely to work well in technical writing.
Interviewer: So then, with the others I have interviewed in this series, I asked them to describe a typical working day. But you have two very different projects so, how do you manage that in one day, or do you break your work up into different days?
Ruvane: I just split it up, mornings and afternoons. Mainly because it suits the workflow at the moment but I often go with what’s needed.
Interviewer: And are you part of a team on both projects? Actually, no, it sounds like you are the team in your second project?
Ruvane: Yes, I am the team…
Interviewer: Team Ruvane!
Ruvane: (Laughs) Yes, to the extent that we have three meetings a week. Each meeting focuses on a particular area. Then, if I am away for a day, that meeting doesn’t happen because there’s no team there. But it’s great, each to their own. Some people are horrified at the idea of me sitting for eight hours by myself every day and I say ‘what are you doing at work if you’re not doing your work by yourself for eight hours a day, what else are you doing?’ So someone’s at the next cubicle, or the next office or wherever – this way, I get far, far more done.
Interviewer: Yes, I agree. In my previous life I worked in an office with six other people and, while it was great fun, you got caught up. Sometimes, because you can’t help but overhear someone else’s phone call, and a big conversation ensues, and the next thing you realize, you haven’t gotten a thing of your own done. So now, I find I am more focussed with no distractions.
So, for both projects, are there clear development lifecycles? How does the work play out?
Ruvane: For , there are fixed life-cycles. They run a very, very pressured, fast development cycle. So, some of the projects are updates and new features, in which case, you know they are going from alpha or beta by the end of the month and it has to be done by then. A whole bunch of the other work is just bugs that come in. Maybe with someone saying that an article isn’t totally clear, or noticing that a screenshot doesn’t match a step, etc. So those are not defined by a project schedule. Bugs are prioritized – some maybe getting done within 24 hours, and some have two weeks to complete.
With the other project it’s just flat out all the time. Because it’s a startup, it’s development all the time – REST API – writing all the time to keep up, and keep going with new features, changes, bugs – so it just sort of rolls.
Interviewer: Are there any particular features in either project that you especially enjoy working on and are especially useful for the end user?
Ruvane: Well, when I write something for , it’s really interesting. For example, I have just written something for a new feature and the article may get 150,000 hits a day.
Interviewer: (Gasp) What? That’s crazy!
Ruvane: It’s quite staggering. Some articles may get far more daily hits. So then you think, ‘if I screw up these steps, there are going to be a lot of angry people and a very embarrassed writer’! There is feedback on everything, back to the developers, back to the writers. It’s quite possible then that someone will say ‘listen, we’ve just had hundreds of support calls because this article is not up to scratch’. So you get a bit paranoid (laughs) when you ask yourself ‘Is this ready to publish?’ ‘Am I ready to go with this?’ ‘Let me check this one more time’.
On the other hand, when something is being seen in those numbers, you think ‘this has the ability to help a hell of a lot of people’, which is great.
With the other project, it’s very different, as there are very few hits at this stage. But again, it’s nice, because it wasn’t all that long ago that we started and there was nothing there – zero. And now I look and there are 180 articles, some of which are multiple pages.
Interviewer: That’s really, really, great. It’s another example of the contrast we spoke of and it also shows how impactful technical writing can be. So do you use any particular tool/s in the project that you had to get to know?
Ruvane: Well, with , they have all their own tools and that’s all we use. And with their massive content management solution system, you can ask it for answers to anything, it keeps track of all the drafts, it handles all the translations, and so on.
Interviewer: It sounds so un-cumbersome;very self-contained.
Ruvane: Oh yes, very, and then we have a huge internal style-guide, which is worked on constantly. And the constant feedback means that things can change anytime. It never stops.
Interviewer: Is there any particular skill-set or manner of content creation that you draw upon for either project?
Ruvane: Maybe just the willingness to say ‘well I’ve always done this in a particular way or with a particular tool and now my client needs me to do something in another way’, maybe with Markdown or whatever and you have to just stop and say, ‘ok, fine, it’s just another tool, sure, no big deal. I can learn to use this if I don’t know it already’.
Unfortunately, in our field, there are so many tools there now that you just can’t turn around and say, ‘no, I just work in this tool’, it just can’t happen.
Interviewer: No, that time is gone. You’re totally right.
So, are there any products or features that you are working on that you are excited about?
Ruvane: So with the second project, everything is new and exciting. Every day is a live environment. By tomorrow, they have decided on a whole new feature and it’s great.
Interviewer: It’s a living organism.
Ruvane: Yes. You know, the head of development might come and say ‘we’ve just come out of a meeting with a new client who’s asked for a new feature and they want to see some documentation before anything is developed’. So that’s how fast they are moving.
Interviewer: Wow, that is really dynamic! So, do you have reference points, go-to support that you draw upon from time to time that might be helpful to other writers?
Ruvane: You see, with that self-contained reference system in the CMS in , I don’t need to go anywhere. For anything else, I often go to that website, I’d rather be writing, and I can recommend others to look there when I am trying to explain why I choose to do something in a particular way because he (Tom Johnson) explains things so well.
Interviewer: Last question, Ruvane. You have such a wealth of knowledge and also your background has evolved in such a nice spectrum of experience, it would be lovely to get your advice for any new tech writer or someone joining a new team.
Ruvane: Try to be aware of people’s background, try to be sensitive. Treat people with basic dignity and respect.
You also need tenacity. Let me put it this way; I love what I do. I love working with Bárd. I love working remotely. I love the contract work because you get to meet new people, do new stuff, use new technologies and all sorts of other things. But it has to suit your character. You have to be aware that you can take all the breaks you want, but the work still has to be done. I’m not sure that trying to force a round peg into a square hole would go well. I don’t know if that ever works but if remote working suits you, it is absolutely brilliant.
And I think a good sense of humor really helps. You must be friendly and responsive because you can’t just reach over the end of the desk and ask your questions; you have to reach out to people. And that’s something I have found with Bárd. No one I have ever worked with within Bárd has ever said ‘I don’t know’ or ‘ask someone else’. They are always friendly, helpful and very patient.
Interviewer: I found this too; from the first day, everyone has tried to help, no matter the issue and been so friendly and supportive.
Well, thanks so much, Ruvane. This has been great and I know, of real interest and use for new writers, and also really interesting to existing writers who will relate to so much of what you spoke about.
Ruvane: No Problem, Áine.
So that’s it folks. It was lovely to chat with Ruvane and tap into his rich repository of experience. Check back with us again soon for the next installment in the Chinwag series. Until then, take care.