Technical Writer

Back in the days before international outsourcing, before the dot com bust, I worked as a contract writer for a government department (now sold off as a private enterprise).

We were a fairly big team, most of us long-term contractors contracting for one of the big consulting companies who ran the IT department for this particular utility.

One of the consultants was in charge of the writing team.

We used to call them ‘droids’, as in androids, because as soon as one left, another one exactly like them took their place.

You know the types—just out of university, fresh from the company indoctrination, and they’re dumped in the middle of a project and told to run it. 

These young things were bright—the cream of their university year, keen and ready to work hard.  But they had absolutely no experience running projects and every single one of them made the same basic mistakes. Every time.

We contractors could say, “But we tried that, and it didn’t work. In fact, it hasn’t worked the last five times we tried it.”

Sometimes we felt we were right in the middle of a Dilbert cartoon.

I’m sure the consulting company used the Documentation department to train their graduates. I’m sure they provided mentoring, but sometimes we wondered. Sometimes it seemed more sink or swim than any other training.

It almost seemed as if the project managers had to make these mistakes to learn from them.

Just when they were starting to get good at their job, the consulting company moved them on to a more senior position, and we ended up with another droid.

Last Modified : November 4th, 2006
Filed under : Training
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