> Among professional tech writers and editors, "engineering documentation" is a pejorative phrase.
Not here. It's documentation written by and for a different audience, and it's valuable. As a professional technical writer and editor, I vastly prefer it over having engineers who won't write anything.
Tech writer value comes from adapting engineering docs for other audiences and use cases: identifying what context needs to be there (or doesn't), providing the value prop, demonstrating real-world workflows, presenting it in a broader narrative of productive usage, and finding ways to make it all confirmable and maintainable over time.
But we aren't (often) engineers, and we need those engineer-written docs as a starting point for our own understanding. I'd avoid ever being pejorative about that. The problem's usually with a culture — or leadership — that believes engineer-written docs are enough for non-engineering users, and that all any tech writer should do is proofread and publish them.
Your point is well taken. Consider my remark a bit of hyperbole--though I've definitely been in more than one conversation in which tech docs professionals described something as "engineering docs" with the clear meaning that it fell below some acceptable standard.
Not here. It's documentation written by and for a different audience, and it's valuable. As a professional technical writer and editor, I vastly prefer it over having engineers who won't write anything.
Tech writer value comes from adapting engineering docs for other audiences and use cases: identifying what context needs to be there (or doesn't), providing the value prop, demonstrating real-world workflows, presenting it in a broader narrative of productive usage, and finding ways to make it all confirmable and maintainable over time.
But we aren't (often) engineers, and we need those engineer-written docs as a starting point for our own understanding. I'd avoid ever being pejorative about that. The problem's usually with a culture — or leadership — that believes engineer-written docs are enough for non-engineering users, and that all any tech writer should do is proofread and publish them.