While I think the road to where I am now could have been much smoother, I also believe God said, "Hey you. I have a plan for you and when you get to the other side of my plan for you, you will be smiling." I believe that as I smile a lot at Company 5 to the extent that I see no path that would leave me elsewhere. Of course, I thought that about Company 1 when I started there on 2/10/95. I sincerely hope to retire from Company 5.
Here's the email I sent and, again, I took some editorial liberties.
[What issues did you face when you used InDesign?]
You may regret asking me by the time you finish reading this, but here goes.
First of all, I’ve never, ever, used Framemaker. I’ve worked at 5 companies since 2/10/95. All but Company 4 used MS Word.
At company 4, InDesign was used to maintain a 100+ page user manual and, for the most part, it was somewhat functional. The issues I ran into centered more around the lack of using the built-in functionality than anything else.
Specifically,
- styles were not used and the TOC was manually typed.
- part of the publishing process was to print the entire user guide simply to verify that the TOC was correct.
- When I suggested setting up styles, it was blown off as "too complicated" to implement by the “senior” member of the department, who was my team lead.
- had to draw a line from the end of the last word in a heading to the right margin, as in:
Adding a Widget_________________<margin>
Except that I couldn't use a underline - that would make sense. I had to manually draw each line and then because the line float and not connected to the heading – and honestly, I did not think to look into grouping the heading with the line or if that was even possible - when there were pagination shifts, the line would "float" and have to be manually moved.
Outside of not using the tool to its fullest, I dealt with other issues.
- The standard for communicating navigation within the system to the user was to use the three periods at the end of the menu option name that, in the UI, means a new window opens. The formatting “standard” was to bold the menu option name and write in this style:
From the <bold>File</bold> menu, click <bold>New...</bold>.
That resulted in three bold periods, followed by a non-bold period. - No style guide – just personal preference.
- This was evident when I asked the lead writer whether I should use one or two spaces after a period. Her reply was, "Use one unless it looks funny - then use two." Defining a standard with the phrase "unless it looks funny" was a symptom of the issues I faced.
The underlying source of my bitterness about this time in my life is that I had been working for Company 3 for a dozen years. I had built a documentation empire. I had taken the documentation from miscellaneous Word docs and help text written in a totally independent tool of Word (a text-based word processor - think Notepad) into an awesome WebHelp system. I was frequently asked what I thought about screen design, about error message verbiage, and anything related to writing. I was even sent to two WinWriter conferences – one in Boston, the other in Long Beach – and sending anyone to a conference was not done. At the time, the CEO was known for losing his temper and lashing out verbally at any time, but he never, ever, raised his voice when I spoke to him.
Why would I leave? Three things:
- Some in the company didn’t think they needed to follow the rules of our software development process. On numerous occasions, software changes that had an impact on the UI were released without coming through me to review them for doc changes. [Snip a lot of specific examples.]
- The industry the company created software for can be likened to a company that makes LPs – there is a market, but that market is drying up and, someday, will not exist. I didn’t want to be there when the market no longer existed.
- The CEO was in his early 60s and when he would be asked what his plans were for the company, he would say he was going to let “Sebastian” run the company. Jacob was his 3 year-old grandson. I remember years of monthly staff meetings where he would tell us we had to plan for our future and yet, he wouldn’t reveal what he intended to do with his future.
All of those factors played into my thinking as I was interviewing with Company 4. During this interview process, I was led to believe that I would have the opportunity to build an empire within Company 4 as they were just starting to get into software development. Company 4 offered more money as a starting salary, the promise that I would be able to move to their new building that was being built 3 miles from my house, and a bonus plan.
It turned out to be too good to be true. Company 4 had documentation for hardware devices and expected the same standards to apply to both. The people were not nice people at Company 4, which made me miss my friends fiercely at Company 3. While I waited for Company 4’s new building to be built, my commute doubled from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. The release of the software I was working on was delayed due to a feature that would not be implemented (seen as a required feature) until a 3rd party contractor finished their software development and that was 2 – 3 months away. That made my daily work transform into copying / pasting translated text. My stress level rose and I began to doubt my abilities and coupled with that, I admit the quality of my work was not the highest quality work I have done. The more I tried to adapt and learn from the edits I received, the more stressed I became until ultimately my self-confidence was lower than dirt.
All throughout my time at Company 4, I had regrets and wanted to return to Company 3, but I was also determined to make the new place work out. My former manager at Company 3 had hired my replacement and did not have room in her budget for me, meaning I could not return to Company 3. I worked my contacts and interviewed with my current manager here at Company 5. The circumstances around that are amazing for me to think about – how lucky things worked out for me.
As things have turned out, I have my doubts regarding if Company 3 would be a good fit for me today. My replacement died, literally, shortly after I began at Company 5. They were purchased by a larger company and have since moved to a different building. Those that thought they could circumvent the processes in place still work there and the company still serves an industry I don't think has a bright future as they still serve a niche market. A few years back, it was announced on a Monday that the Company 3 CEO’s last day would be that Friday and so, after founding the company in 1979, he was out the door within a week in 9/2011. Read into that what you want.
That all said, I realize I have a bad taste in my mouth regarding InDesign, but mainly because I do not think it was used correctly at Company 4.
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