Monica hates tech writers

Milan Davidovic sent a link to Monica's declaration of hatred of software tech writers:

10. A last segue, but really important: Your tech writers writing Help files and software manuals. Those guys suck at it. They haven't a clue. They don't know what the hell they're doing. This is not their skill set. When you have to look in five different places to find the answer to how to do one simple process, something's wrong. It's your tech writers. No, I don't care if you've helpfully given another 5-10 links in a Help topic or a reference in a manual to where one can find more information; that's stupid. It should be in the same spot. Computers are supposed to be about efficiency, remember? Instead, use some of those much-vaunted brains and hire some folks who are professionals at writing manuals and textbooks, like college professors who've done similar and so on, and have them write the manuals. People are going to have to buy a book with actual step-by-step lessons, or take a class in how to do things anyway, and you're idiots who are losing a ton of money by thinking tech writing = normal people learning. No. It doesn't. Even for those of us who've read quite a lot of your crap. It's been 30-odd years now. Don't you think it's time you woke up to this little factoid?

She makes some good points, but I wonder if she'd really be happy with her suggested solution: hiring college professors to write software documentation. I've read at least as many badly written college texts as badly written software docs. And the theoretical advantage college profs have over software tech writers is that they're supposed to be experts in the topic they're writing about: most tech writers are not. Tech writers need to interpret whatever information they get from software developers, project managers, quality assurance technicians, and other SME's. Many tech writers think of themselves as "speaker to geeks" within their workplaces.