Developer Battled To Write His Own Documentation, But Lost The Boss Fight
The Register, Friday, November 14th, 2025
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Gordon" who told us about his time working for a storage vendor as the sole developer and maintainer of an application used by around 50 other employees.
"I took over this package, gave it a nice overhaul, and wrote what I thought was a pretty good user guide that was about 40 pages long," Gordon told On Call. He then updated the manual each time he finished a new release of the software. At the time this story took place, it was sensible to print such documents. Gordon did so using the office photocopier, a stapler, and a little shoe-leather to distribute his work.
That practice caught the attention of someone in the company's bureaucracy who knew that the technical writing team had responsibility for printing, publication, and distribution of important documents. Gordon was therefore required to engage with that team, which he says jumped at the chance to help because it would mean they looked busy.