engineer: we have had an experienced technical writer on the team for a year and involved them in every user-facing process, we did six rounds of A/B testing for all documentation and operation, and we’ve produced a manual which basically qualifies for a pullitzer.
later…
it’s broken is it showing an error?
idk it’s just broken what did you do?
nothing! it just broke how did it break?
we needed it to go faster so we connected it to the 480V line and then it just broke it’s a 12V device…
yeah it’s an even multiple right?
At one of my past jobs I wanted to institute a “put a dollar in the jar” rule every time someone made a useless bug report.
“The site is down” -> dollar in the jar.
“I’m trying to access the site via the public internet in firefox 136.0.3, and I’m getting a 500 on [request], and then the whole page is blank. Here’s a screenshot.” -> good
Sometimes people don’t know. Sometimes they don’t care. But if there’s no consequences, people aren’t going to change. And if they’re not going to change, at least we can do a team lunch every week with the jar full of money.
meanwhile in the b2b world…
later…
i have been on both sides of this exchange.
At one of my past jobs I wanted to institute a “put a dollar in the jar” rule every time someone made a useless bug report.
“The site is down” -> dollar in the jar.
“I’m trying to access the site via the public internet in firefox 136.0.3, and I’m getting a 500 on [request], and then the whole page is blank. Here’s a screenshot.” -> good
Sometimes people don’t know. Sometimes they don’t care. But if there’s no consequences, people aren’t going to change. And if they’re not going to change, at least we can do a team lunch every week with the jar full of money.