I'd Rather Be Writing

6 Responses to “Podcast: From Overlooked to Center Stage [12]”

1. Will Findlay says:

   April 18, 2010 at 5:29 pm

   Great post Tom. I’ve had a similar experience as an instructional designer with being that guy who logs bugs in JIRA all the time. I think that we (technical writers and instructional designers) start becoming user advocates because the only other alternative is apathy. Either you start caring about the user experience, or you give up and decide to live with interfaces and workflows that you know are going to confuse users. When you are in a role where you are frequently asked by people why something has to be done a certain way in an application, and you don’t have a good answer, its time to expand your role or go you’ll go crazy.
   • Tom Johnson says:

     April 18, 2010 at 11:05 pm

     Will, good point. You’re right. If you care about the app, improving the usability is a natural progression you take. Thanks for commenting.
2. Ali says:

   April 21, 2010 at 7:59 am

   Tom,
   I just finished your series “From Overlooked to Center Stage” (the written posts, not the podcast on this post) and each post has made me glad I subscribed to your blog. I must admit, though, when I logged on Monday morning and saw all those posts, I was a little overwhelmed and almost skipped over them. I’m glad I didn’t!
   What stands out to me is that most posts I’ve read about what a tech comm does ends up being depressing or confusing (what the heck is DITA??). I went back and read the post you linked, “The Raw, Unvarnished Truth,” and it, too, painted a depressing picture.

   I have been in a tech comm role for just a few months and have been feeling the weight of being an unappreciated and overlooked employee. Everyone who has seen my work has said it is great, but there are long periods of nothing between each deliverable. Why even come to the office when I can surf the internet on my own computer? I have ranted several times to my husband about how boring and pointless my role is and how I come home miserable every day. The only reason I haven’t quit on several occasions is that having no job is more depressing for me than having a job I can’t stand.
   Then I decided to change something. I decided my job didn’t have to be boring. I realized if I quit, I would just go through the same process at another company. It wasn’t the company or the position: it was me, sitting around and waiting for someone to tell me what to do. The problem is I’m the only tech comm at the company and no one knows what I’m supposed to do.

   A couple weeks ago, a supervisor mentioned how overwhelemed the developers were and how nice it would be if someone could pick up the slack with reporting services (used along with our software product). I practically jumped out of my seat when I told him I could help. I didn’t know anything about this task, but I knew I had to do something. The misery of my job was permeating other areas of my life.

   Your idea to expand and take control of my role makes perfect sense to me. For a few weeks now I’ve been learning about building reports and it has made a huge difference in my outlook. I am building a valuable skill that can help out a project when the developers are busy doing product development. Plus, this new task helps keep me busy when user guides are all up to date.
   I’ve also decided that Quick Reference Guides and short help videos are exactly what our products need. Our customers request large manuals because they think software can’t be “complete” without it, but instead of reading it they call our support desk or schedule training sessions.
   Your series has helped me realize that my job is what I make of it. It’s my decision whether I go home miserable and feeling overlooked or go home excited because I took the initiative and became an integral part of the process.
   Thanks for your insight!
   • Tom Johnson says:

     April 26, 2010 at 7:49 am

     Ali, I loved reading your comment. Thanks so much for sharing your experience about expanding your role. Comments like these seem to validate many of the ideas in the post. I know that the knowledge you gain doing reports may prove to be helpful later on either in the same project or another.
3. Rengaraman says:

   April 22, 2010 at 3:05 am

   Tom,
   Just now finished this series. Another deserving series from you to be bookmarked. This series made me to re-collect beginning of my career as an Instructional designer helping in DB programming and User Interface ideas.
   Now I became a part of our QA team raising unique bugs all in the user point of view.

   Thanks for this series, I would prefer reading this series again.
   • Tom Johnson says:

     April 26, 2010 at 7:44 am

     Thanks Rengaraman. I’m glad you enjoyed the series. I’m going to try to write more series posts like this.