Like a dog returneth to its vomit...

[venta]

A month ago, I wrote here about the demise of the company I'd worked for since leaving university.

I went through the signing-on pantomime, I looked through job adverts. I polished my CV and sent it to people.

Who almost all ignored me.

A couple of weeks back, I agreed to work for a new start-up company. It hadn't an office, or any equipment. I've been working at home for the past ten days or so, and today I went into the hastily-acquired but tiny office space. Which still doesn't have any equipment - like, say, computers - in it. I already know my immediate boss; it's the same guy who was my boss at the previous company. Similarly, the CEO making the introductory speech looked strangely familiar. In fact... all the people piled into the room were ex-colleagues. The office is - with a bit of imagination and a big lever - a stone's throw from our old building.

A handful of people - some management and some engineers - have somehow brought an entire new company into being in slightly under five weeks. It's not a carbon-copy of the old one, though it's working in the same area of technology.

So, the good news: I am employed again, working with people I know and like for a company which sounds exciting. The bad news: I'm back to the grind of two hours' commuting every day. Oh, and I drew the short straw: the stuff I was working on at the old company is not currently required, and our former documentation guy has taken a contract elsewhere. Being literate, pedantic and inclined to whinge about documentation standards I am temporarily seconded to the life of a technical author.

Of the people on the books of my previous employer when the ship went down, fewer than 10% have not elected to climb aboard the new vessel. As yet, I'm unsure whether this demonstrates amazing staff loyaly, or merely highlights what an amazingly slack bunch we were when it came to finding new jobs.

Edit When I posted this, the formatting went all to pot and I had to manually add <p> tags to make it sensible. So apologies if it gets very spacey when whatever glitch it was recovers.

Comments

[uitlander.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

We should also talk seriously about doc design and how to keep your doc set low maintenance - this may meaning using one or two tools you've never heard of before. It may not seem that much of a consideration now, but believe me, it will save you a whole world of pain in teh long run.... same as that comment about putting right things you wish you'd done differently 15 years ago.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Obviously I'd appreciate any advice you've got to offer! Sadly, though, it seems that I'm only going to be let loose on external-facing documentation. Internal stuff (written by developers) is out of my remit and (in my opinion) looking like it's going to be done in an even worse way than at the last company.

I'm currently investigating DocBook, which seems like a good plan.

[uitlander.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Although DocBook has the 'open source' mark of approval, I've never seen it used in industry. It has some nice ideas (I looked into it at your old place as well), but for external facing docs it's probably a poor choice.

Take a look at www.author-it.com, Framemaker and Robohelp - those are all the main industry options beyond Word - the determining factor is really what delivery formats you need to deliver your doc in, and how many parallel formats you need. In a situation where you need more than one delivery format, AuthorIT wins (but it is a devil to configure with hidden traps everywhere. I can install, configure the AIT database, set up templates and internal AIT config and train you how to maintain it and extend it for your company on a consultancy basis if you decide to go down that path - its not trivial, and you will need help to get it up and running).

Give me a call this evening and I'll talk you through the pros and cons of each option.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I should add, though, that I'm keen to receive no training and to make things as simple as possible just to make sure that I'm not seen as a future technical author - I'm out of there and straight back to programming as soon as I can reasonably get away with it. I definitely want as little money/resources as possible invested in me!

[uitlander.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I understand where you're coming from. But just as with the code the decisions and config for your doc you put in place now will have a major impact on how your docset works in the future, how easy it is to look after and how flexible it it. The key question to get answers for is how many output formats you have to deliver in (PDF, HTML, Word, compiled help [n different formats of that]).

That why we should talk, you'll save yourself a lot of pain in a few months time and the company a fair bit of money in the longer term if I can help you put the most flexible and appropriate doc solution in place up front.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Sorry: to clarify... yes, I'd like to talk to you and will endeavour to find an evening when I'm not dancing ASAP.

[venta.livejournal.com]

noted and deleted :)