Colleague recommendations from my time at Expel. Find more recommendations here:
She listens first. She takes the time to really understand the problems we're facing and hear out perspectives. There is a good reason engineers have a lousy reputation for documenting their software and it would've been pretty simple to jump straight into making changes without having those conversations and assuming we were not interested in being part of the process. She meets us halfway on the technical side. Meaning she is committed to opening the pull requests to modify our documentation directly and climbing the learning curve necessary to get there. See this very active Jira issue: (REDACTED) for evidence of that commitment. I would've expected a technical writing team interested in modifying our public-facing API documentation which is generated at build-time and requires pull requests to change to simply lob requirements over the fence at the responsible engineering teams. The fact that Elizabeth is actively considering new tools and will begin to make those changes on her own w/ reviews from us is above and beyond in my book.
Elizabeth works on some of the hardest content problems in the product, the kind with no clean answers and a lot of stakeholders. She's methodical, asks the right questions to the right people, and doesn't let things fall through the cracks. Every team should have an Elizabeth so I'm lucky to have her on mine!
I strongly recommend Elizabeth Haynes for promotion to Principal Technical Writer. She was instrumental to the success of the Assembler Migration project. Her clear documentation and customer communications were essential to helping over 130 customers migrate their Assemblers themselves without overburdening our technical support staff. Elizabeth took the time to work with my engineers and learn the onboarding process, performing many of the technical steps herself so she really understood the customer’s perspective, and then turning that experience into polished documentation. My team owes a huge debt of gratitude to Elizabeth, and I strongly support her as a rising star here at Expel.
I am writing to recommend Elizabeth for promotion to Principal Technical Writer. Over the course of working with her on the Assembler onboarding guides, she has consistently demonstrated an exceptional level of professionalism and expertise. Her ability to simplify complex technical concepts has significantly enhanced our documentation quality, making it accessible and comprehensible for all readers at any level of technical ability. Additionally, her meticulous attention to detail ensures that every piece of content is accurate, thorough, error-free and follows the Expel standard. Elizabeth's collaborative nature and positive attitude make her an invaluable team member, consistently fostering a productive and harmonious work environment. Her world-class skills and dedication to excellence unquestionably merit this promotion.
Elizabeth always makes herself available to listen, talk through decisions or challenges, and provide feedback (verbally or for a written piece). This comes into play often, but it especially did when we first started on onboarding guides — working in unfamiliar applications, making decisions around style, creating templates for future guides, and testing and editing each other’s work. Having someone like her who is so willing to collaborate on multiple levels makes that type of work a million times easier and more enjoyable. Elizabeth's experience and thoughtfulness has been invaluable as we've been working to evolve this technical documentation team. She outlined requirements, tested, and led the search for a tool to better support us in creating and managing technical documentation in the future. During our Assembler v2 documentation project, she ensured we had access to the applications we needed, level-set with stakeholders (especially key when it came to expectations around validating procedures and timelines), and determined the structure for the documentation so we could plug it in as new integrations became available. We were able to deliver the documentation ahead of schedule, to the delight of our internal stakeholders and customers. I seek out and trust Elizabeth's opinions because of her years of experience with this type of work as well as her straightforwardness. She is kind, quick to share knowledge, offer help, and does not gatekeep, all of which I think are outstanding qualities in a teammate and leader.
There are many things I respect Elizabeth for and would use as evidence for my recommendation:
- Her ability to clearly communicate her preferences with regards to how she would like her needs delivered. It makes my job working with her so much easier.
- Is flexible when my preferences may be misaligned with hers
- For example, at times I prefer async communication whereas she may prefer a live demonstration instead. Elizabeth has been understanding when I just can't squeeze a live demo into my schedule and has used my preliminary drafts as a starting point. She also suggested using customer call recordings as a compromise which I thought was a great idea.
- Is open to questions and thoughts about the document itself from us "non-writers"
- Elizabeth is definitely not a "I'm the expert here. We do it my way. No more questions." kind of person. While she is the expert, she is not a dictator and is willing to have a conversation about the documentation when I am confused and easily clarifies my questions/concerns.
- Is able to put herself in the mind of the intended audience and ask great questions accordingly. There are many things in the assembler docs that would have been missed had Elizabeth (and Ainsley!) not been a collaborator on the documentation.
- While the entire docs team has been incredibly busy these past few months, she does a great job letting me know that the work I bring up needs to be prioritized (and it may take a while to get done) instead of avoiding me. She also regularly checks in with me on her progress (as well as checking in with me on my action items without me feeling like I'm being micro-managed)