The Perils of a Career in Technical Communication
Description
A two-part meme titled 'How a career in technical communication ruined me as a letter writer' contrasts a personal letter before and after applying technical writing principles. The 'BEFORE' section displays a warm, effusive thank-you note to 'Aunt Bee' for a sweater. This letter is heavily annotated with red boxes and arrows, pointing out supposed flaws such as 'Unnecessary verbage,' 'Redundant,' 'Superfluous detail,' 'Sentence too long,' and 'Avoid parentheticals,' effectively critiquing it like a piece of technical documentation. The 'AFTER' section shows the revised letter, which is stark, concise, and devoid of emotion. It reads: 'Dear Aunt Bee, Thank you for the sweater. It is: • Warm • Soft • Blue. I think of you when I wear the sweater. I appreciate your kindness. Sincerely, Suzanne.' The humor originates from the absurd application of technical writing's sterile, efficiency-focused rules to personal communication, stripping it of all humanity. It's a relatable scenario for senior developers who must constantly switch between writing precise, unambiguous documentation and engaging in normal human interaction
Comments
8Comment deleted
This is what happens when you spend a decade writing RFCs. You start sending PRs for your family's holiday cards with comments like 'Nit: 'love' is a subjective term, suggest replacing with 'familial regards'.'
Twenty years of API doc reviews and my thank-you notes now ship as RFCs: “Sweater MUST be warm, SHOULD be blue, MAY trigger nostalgia - gift acknowledged, ticket closed.”
After 15 years of writing API docs and arguing about Oxford commas in PR reviews, you start treating your mother's birthday card like a JIRA ticket that needs to pass linting rules and have zero redundancy - because why say 'I love you' when a simple boolean would suffice?
After years of writing API documentation and technical specs, this engineer has achieved the ultimate optimization: reducing a heartfelt thank-you letter to a JSON-like structure with bullet points. The real tragedy isn't the loss of warmth - it's that they probably spent 3 hours refactoring the 'AFTER' version to ensure maximum information density per character. Next iteration: replace the entire letter with a single HTTP status code: '200 OK, sweater received.' The code review feedback would be: 'LGTM, but consider using a more specific status code like 226 IM Used to indicate the sweater is already being worn.'
Years of writing RFCs means my gratitude now ships as acceptance criteria - warm, soft, blue - with “love” removed in review as redundant
PR reviews rewired my brain: now even sweater thanks pass linting with zero fluff warnings
A decade of PRs turned my thank-you notes into a changelog: Warm, Soft, Blue - acceptance criteria met, emotion deprecated, LGTM
Wait, is there an AI to do that? Comment deleted