The New Sheriff in Town: Bringing Documentation Out of Chaos (Write the Docs, 2014)

By the time we get to mid-career, most of us have specialized, by technology, or organization type, or document type. We have a comfort zone.

I have specialized in walking into chaos and creating order. I’ve done it enough times that I have a sequence of steps I follow. I imagine myself as a sheriff walking into a lawless western town. The people in the town aren’t necessarily bad, but they have been operating without the constraints of law for a while, and they are going to resent the feeling of getting structure imposed on them. In the long run, though, everyone will be happier.