Introducing our new blog series, where we sit down with our own colleagues in Docforce, Bárd na nGleann, and Bárdwrite, and with our partner colleagues to chat about all things tech. We find out about the work they’re doing, their thoughts on new tools, trends, and new directions, and gather career tips and insights they’ve gleaned along the way.
For our first interview, we sat down with one of our lead writers to discuss her work with a major tech business. We can name no names; we take our confidentiality commitments to our partners very seriously. Safe to say, you’ve definitely heard of them – ooo, mysterious!!
Interviewer: ‘Good morning, Ms X’ (I didn’t really call her that, but it sounds cool!). ‘Thanks so much for sitting down with me today, I know you’re really busy. I appreciate it. Just to set the scene, can I ask, where are you right now?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Good morning Áine, no problem, happy to talk with you. So, yeah, I’m actually at home, at my desk in North Cork, Ireland’.
Interviewer:’ Oh wow, beautiful part of the world! So, to get the ball rolling, could you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into technical writing?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah, so, well, I did Equine Science in college, which was great but useless for a career in tech! I actually did a post grad degree in technical writing and got a job with an alarm company in Dublin. I was their only tech writer, it was a fairly small company. Anyway, after 2 years at that, I just didn’t want to live in the city anymore. I’m a country girl at heart, so I left my job and headed home to Cork. So I arrived home, no job, nothing. My parents looked after me, being the great parents they are, and I eventually applied for a technical writer position with Bárd na nGleann. That was 20 years ago and I’ve been with them ever since’.
Interviewer: ‘20 years, congrats! Well that says a lot’.
Mystery Writer: ‘It does, I’ve never looked back. I love it here’.
Interviewer: ‘And isn’t it interesting how many of us come to technical writing from previous careers that were totally different? My own background is in behavioural science and community development but yet, here I am too!’
Mystery Writer: ‘It really is. You hear it all the time. I guess it’s something some people fall into over time. I’m glad I did’.
Interviewer: ‘So, essentially, as a Bárd writer, you get seconded to outside projects. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to work on the X project (gotta protect my sources ; -))?’
Mystery Writer: ‘ Yes, that’s right. I’ve been with loads of different projects over the years but I was with Y (yet another multinational with strong confidentiality protocols. Let’s just say, it’s very likely you have interacted with some of their networking hardware/software, or their telecommunications solutions) for, I dunno, maybe ten years. I worked with so many different groups within Y, they’re such a big corporation, it’s like working for lots of little companies within it. But their web conferencing (you know the drill, can’t be more specific) section was the last place I worked for them. Y eventually took them over so I continued to work on the REDACTED (this looks so much cooler!) project until REDACTED started to cut their numbers. I was one of the last people to be cut but it was a big shock. I loved it there. My manager was wonderful, he was really supportive. It was hard to leave that team. But then I went to work with X and I’ve been there for years now. I really like it, and one of the great things is that I work with a really good friend of mine who actually lives just up the road from me here, which is lovely. We both work for Bárd but are contractors to X, so we can support one another’.
Interviewer: ‘Oh wow, that’s really nice, to have your friend working with you, makes the work-day easier I’d say. And what kind of projects do you focus on there?’
Mystery Writer: ‘It’s mostly their REDACTED enterprise networking solution. So mostly, we write for our help centre there. Articles, educational articles, white papers, release notes. All that kind of thing’.
Interviewer: ‘Right, so what does a typical day look like for you?’
Mystery Writer: ‘To be honest, there is no typical day’.
Interviewer: ‘Oh, even better! That must make things really interesting?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah, we work within an issue tracker where each piece of work is called a bug and our program manager pushes these bugs to us. The development team creates the bug, requesting documentation from us, and they attach any documentation that applies to it. So everything we do is through this issue tracker, which works really well. We can create our own bugs too if we feel some article or information is outdated or needs a usability refresh’.
‘We don’t really have a lot of SME meetings unless there’s a new, really complicated feature coming. We have our own Bárd project X team meetings every week, where the four writers on this team all meet. Then we have a weekly meeting with our project X manager. Our old team manager took early retirement so that was hard too. I loved him. We just meet to touch base, they’re not really heavy meetings, we don’t go into lot’s of detail. We chat out anything big coming down the pipeline’.
Interviewer: ‘So it sounds like the issue tracker method works really well, you get most things covered through that process without having to have lots of heavy meetings?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah…well they’re program managers, we’re just a small part of what they have to manage. They have a lot of stuff going on and we’re just a small part of it’.
Interviewer: ‘So then, is it easy to create a bug yourselves, like if there’s an issue you spot or something that needs updating? Is a request from the writing team taken seriously from the get go?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Oh yeah, there’s no problem there. The program managers are really good, they’re very responsive. They really do appreciate our work. X loves documentation, they really do. I think we are definitely higher up the food chain at X than we might be at some other companies. They just…they see the benefits of good documentation…so, yeah, we’re definitely part of the process. They always keep us in consideration and we’re normally… now, I mean, it’s sometimes… they forget about us and forget to tell us small stuff, but we’re normally brought in, not right at the start, but we’re brought in halfway through the process or whatever, and they appreciate what we…what inputs we have’.
Interviewer: ‘That’s so good to hear, you always wonder about how different companies handle that part. Are the writers integral, you know?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Oh yeah, they are really good. I always think of a technical writer I know in another company who said she was having to buy dinner for the engineers to get them to review her documentation (laughs…)’.
Interviewer: ‘Oh wow, that’s some lengths to go to (laughs)! So then, I guess you’ve kind of answered this question, in part, already, but where in the documentation lifecycle do you come in? So then, you come into the process part of the way through and them, like, what? Do you get onboard straight away with the team, or do you get an overview and then return to your little corner to work on an element of the overall feature?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah… so as contractors, we don’t usually ever have the whole picture… we don’t work on the big picture stuff. They still really appreciate any inputs we have, but we wouldn’t be…like, creating a new help centre or something’.
Interviewer: ‘So, do you feel that your contribution, as in your documentation and how you approach the development of your content, has a positive impact on the X project product overall, if this isn’t too big a question?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah…yeah…like I really think the company, the project managers really value us and what we do. They see us as a valuable part of the company. As for the end users…I hope so…I mean, X is such a huge company, we don’t really get the stats on that…you can’t really get a feeling for how the end users of something as big as that value our documentation, but I think we can see from our project managers satisfaction with us that our content is of real value’.
‘I suppose, as a technical writer, it’s always going to be the big question; are people reading what you write? Who really knows. But, as a technical writer, you just have to live with it. You assume that, if everything is going well, then, they must be reading at least some of it’.
Interviewer: ‘You’re so right…I mean, before I became a tech writer, I crested annual reports for a particular government department. These things were huge, but we always wondered how much of the content was ever read. But you’d go mad if you spent too much time worrying about it’.
Mystery Writer: ‘Oh I know, But you know, I think, yeah, we need to get away from these big clunky pieces. That’s what we’re trying to do in X … so really, we don’t use…we use everyday language. We don’t use, like engineer speak. We try to speak to the user and be really a bit more casual’.
Interviewer: ‘That’s great. Then do you have to employ a particular mindset or a particular set of skills specific to your work with X? Maybe, more so than with previous companies you worked with?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Well yeah, this keeping it simple, speaking directly to the user is something that’s huge with X. Across all their content, that’s what they want. I also think it helps that I am personable. I like people…I just work really well with people. I mean, I like to foster good relationships with the project managers too, actually that helps with our new manager, REDACTED, he was a contractor like me and we worked closely, then it turns out he’s our new project manager and he’s super friendly and nice and I try to be like that. I always try to be really super friendly and build relationships with people. It really helps, especially in companies as big as X and when you’re working on lots of different bugs on different features’.
Interviewer: ‘That’s fabulous! I love that too. I know, when I started out as a writer, I thought I might never get to really interact with humans anymore (laughs). But then, I figured out that technical writing depends on those relationships and interactions. The content is all the better for it’ .
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah, it makes all the difference. I work with a really great team and we work so well together…I mean, REDACTED, she’s my friend, and she’s the team lead, then REDACTED, oh…I don’t know, maybe a year ago and she fitted in really well. There are four Bárd na nGleann writers on the X project. X has actually come to Bárd over and over for more writers’.
Interviewer: ‘Wow, that speaks volumes for your work at X!’
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah, I suppose it really does. They hold us in very high regard in the company’.
Interviewer: ‘They must do! Well then, you kind of said it earlier on, in a way for me. I wondered about tips for technical writers, specifically, how to ensure technical writers are always part of the bigger conversation?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Yeah. ‘So, I really think being personable and organized is massive. These project managers or program managers, they have a lot going on. They’re juggling a lot of balls. They don’t want to be dealing with anything that they don’t need to deal with. You just go away and do your job and you get back to them only when you need to, and try to always be friendly. And they’ll return the favor’.
Interviewer: ‘That’s a great point. We all have a job to do and we need to get on with it. Whenever that question is asked, the response is always to be organized, but like, actually streamlining, getting right down to just what you need and not bothering to ask questions that, actually, you could go and solve yourself, that’s crucial’.
Mystery Writer: ‘Right, right. I mean go away and Google something that you don’t know rather than asking them about it, do a bit of research’.
Interviewer: ‘Totally agree! Again, I would say you’ve already touched on this for me but, what would you say are the particular strengths you bring to your team dynamic?’
Mystery Writer: ‘So. Yeah, well, I’m like… I am easy enough to get on with, I think I’m not gonna… some people want to step on your head to rise up. That’s not me. I definitely want to support people coming in and make sure that they’re not struggling or overwhelmed. You could get completely overwhelmed starting in X. I like to make sure no one… no one feels under unnecessary pressure, that the workload is evenly balanced. This is the way we’re always there for each other. If there’s any issue, we know we can contact someone and we like to keep it within our Bárd team. We don’t like to look for help outside of Bárd, if we can help it. We can go to the rest of the X Bárd team, outside of the project we work on, if we need help. We’ll always try our own team, then the rest of the Bárd team before we go anywhere else’.
Interviewer: ‘Sounds like ye are a really good team, and very resourceful. Do you think there is much scope for learning in the project you work on? Like, either for personal or professional growth?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Well, I mean, I’m always learning, we’re always learning as we’re writing. As contractors, X doesn’t offer courses or anything like that but there’s always the training or learning we need with Bárd. I like X… I struggled… I did struggle. It was a big learning curve. I’m used to going from project to project and I’ll fit in fairly fast, but it was a struggle with X, it seemed impersonal at first and so huge, but now I love it. I love the team I work with’.
Interviewer: ‘Fantastic. So then, all that’s left to ask is if you have any last words of advice to freshly minted technical writers or writers that are entering a new project on the scale of the X project?’
Mystery Writer: ‘Well, yeah, I know I said it but it’s so, so important. Try to hit the ground running. Do your own research before you go running with questions. I’m not saying to struggle, and drown, and feel like you can’t ask people, but try and try to ensure… before you’ve come to people with questions…try to ensure that you have gone and looked at this and looked at that. Yeah. Fine if you still have questions, they feel like, oh, well, she’s tried and she’s gone here and there. They’ll jump in and help you out. I just feel like you need to… yeah… you need to research, make sure you look everywhere that you can think of’.
Interviewer: ‘That’s great. Well, thanks for your insights and telling us about your years of experience across so many different projects. I know that this will be of real interest, not just to new writers, but to anyone facing a challenging new writing direction’.
Mystery Writer:’ No problem, happy to talk’.
So there you have it, guys, our mysterious guest’s invaluable insight into her life as a professional technical writer, with all it’s ups and downs (mainly ups!) Hope you enjoyed it. There’s more where that came from; check back with us for more interviews with our colleagues and partners to learn about their experiences in the tech industry and where they think we are headed.