No wonder Borland Technical Documentation stinks

The job description for the technical writer vacancies at Borland show what
goes on behind the scenes and how documentation is really just a minor
sideshow in the whole process.

You can see it at:

http://borland.hodesiq.com/job_detail.asp?JobID=666131&user_id=

But the bits that jump out at me are:

"Research material without written technical specifications"

What does this mean? Are there swathes of material requiring documentation
that have no technical specifications? Is is a free-for-all?

"Produce clear, accurate, and well-organized documentation that requires
minimal editing with minimal direction"

Miminal editing and minimal direction, eh? I take that to mean that this
stuff is unlikely to be read within the organisation once it's been written
and that the QA within the technical documentation domain is "minimal" to
non-existent. I can imagine that somebody will look at the titles and if
everything on the checklist is there then it gets signed off.

The overall advert implies that what they are after is somebody who can
write stuff without any feedback from anybody. Somebody who has to read the
source code to figure out how to describe something rather than get adequate
input from the architects and implementors and somebody who can live with
nobody ever giving them any idea whether what they are doing is poor,
adequate or excellent.

In other words..

"Here's your desk. Here's the code. Now get on with it and I don't want to
hear from you again until it's finished"

This does not fill me with confidence, especially as the quality of
documentation is what causes me greatest frustration with what comes out of
Borland.


.

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