Hacker News Reader

Where I work, technical writers earn 0.92 of a developer's wage, while a team leader earns 1.4 of a developer's wage. These are calculated from actual contract with our client.

While I'm pretty good with some documentation tools like docutils and graphviz, it makes me wish not to pursue documentation skills too much.

View on HN

Dishwashers earn a tiny fraction of a developer's wage, I am quite proficient at washing dishes, and yet I have no fear of trapping myself in a career of dishwashing.

I can think of very few non-contrived workplace situations in which being bad at something is an advantage.

That's a poor reason. Learning how to write effective technical documentation is a great skill for anyone in our field. Even a team lead should be able to edit/review technical documentation.

At the very least, they should be able to determine if the documentation is good and articulate why not.

Yes! And this is why I wrote the piece. There will always be developer and engineers writing documentation for projects, why not help them be better at it?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com