Life update

It's been an extremely busy and interesting last month. I started my new job in early November, and I still feel like I'm fumbling around trying to figure things out. I started getting a little bit down on myself today because I feel like I should be further along, but then I had remind myself that it's only been a little over a month and I'm the one putting the pressure on myself. So far, everyone has been really helpful and I've been receiving good feedback. So, I just need to ease up a little on myself.

It's kind of weird, in a way. When I was a contractor and a vendor, I had to move around much more frequently or at least be prepared to move around frequently. My contract or project could change at any moment, so I think I was more used to adapting to change. I was on my last team for almost three and a half years (three of that as a full-time employee), so I had the ability to build the documentation set from the ground up and to become a subject matter expert (SME) in that product. I was definitely on top of my product and documentation, so it was much easier to make a decision about where new information should go and how to prioritize all of the work. But, during that time I wasn't as focused on keeping up with other things in the industry because I was heavy into building my expertise.

This is one of the hardest things at NerdCo (a name I've blatantly stole from a fellow blogger/previous co-worker). It's a huge company with all kinds of different specialties and technology development. We're constantly on the cutting edge and as a result, I don't think any of us really ever feel comfortable in our expertise. There is always something else out there that we'd love to know if we had more time in the day. But at the end of the day, we're all part of this machine trying to meet deadlines and then moving right onto the next big thing. And the fact that everyone has different ship schedules and products are constantly in flux means that it's really hard to always get a good end-to-end scenario documented until after things stabalize. Sometimes we don't even get that until customers go live with our products and can give us additional information.

In any case, I'm realizing that this is not only frustrating for customers but also for those transitioning to different teams. I just took over this new documentation set, and I'm trying to figure out what's currently there, what's missing, and how I can improve on the existing content. At the same time, I'm trying to learn the last version of the product and the next release of the product so that I can update old content and write new content. And, as if that weren't enough, I'm trying to figure out all of the processes and the culture of this new team. I had a sort of fire-drill yesterday when I thought I had missed something big. It turned out that we are marching to a slightly different schedule than a few of the other content teams, so I was worried for no reason. But, it freaked me out enough to wonder if I'm missing something other things. And of course I'm missing other things because I'm new, but I won't know what those things are until something happens to bring it to the surface.

I've also recently been reading through customer feedback on my newly-acquired topics and some are really frustrating because it doesn't have to do with the topic per se, but rather their frustration about how to get technologies to work together and they just unload it all in a comment in one topic. There's absolutely nothing I can do about those kinds of scenarios, because we just can't possibly address every single thing. We try to get the 80% scenarios to work and then the rest have to go to experts who can help to troubleshoot issues that often have to do with environment issues or that span several groups to try and get the technologies to play nicely with one another. It's an incredibly difficult job.

And I understand their frustration. I feel it every day when I'm trying to figure out how best to present information, and you can never make everyone happy. So you get comments that people hate content that has links in it, while other people hate to scroll and thing a topic is too long. Or you get a low rating with no actual comment, so you have no idea what the person didn't like about the topic.

Today, I went to the bookstore to pick up a couple of books about the last version of my product. While I was there, I saw a couple of new books had come out about my last product. I looked longingly through the pages at all of the things that I actually understood. And then I reminded myself that it took me three and a half years to acquire all of that knowledge. So, that's when I decided that I need to give myself a little bit of a break. I'll still work my butt off to learn all of this stuff, but I need to be patient with myself and understand that this will all come in time. And I reminded myself that I can't compare myself to the woman whose documentation I'm taking. She's been on this team and product for over eight years, and built everything from the ground up. I'm in the same position as the woman who took over my old documentation on my last team. We actually went to dinner last night, and consoled each other in how difficult this all is.

I know that I'm whining, and I apologize. There are so many good things about this change, and I will write about them later. And I always know that I am lucky to work for such a great company and with such great people. It's just sometimes overwhelming. I definitely work hard for my money!