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The following are exercises for technical writer positions.

Title: Technical Writer Information Design

  • Part 1: Candidate explains topic to interviewer. Interviewer asks candidate to explain/teach something they know a lot about. This can be anything from how a database works to how dogs are trained to the work of a specific author. Interviewer tells candidate to figure out how much they know about the topic and to explain/teach with that in mind. Interviewer asks for clarifications, context, deeper explanations, as necessary.

  • Follow-up Questions: Interviewer asks candidate to sketch outline for how they would document topic.

    • Initial concept on whiteboard.

    • Final documentation of the topic to be written in Google Doc.

Title: Technical Writer Technical Competency and Documentation 1

  • Set-up: Distributed Transaction Model presentation will be shared on the Google doc. Please review the presentation during the interview.

  • Part 1: Interviewer explains Distributed Transaction Model. Candidate learns, explains back, and then documents.

  • Considerations:

    • Interviewer sets up activity: "I'm going to explain a DB concept to you. I'll ask you to explain it back to me, so ask questions whenever you have them."

    • Interviewer explains DB concept to candidate.

    • Candidate learns/ask questions.

    • Interviewer asks candidate to explain the concept.

    • At the end, Interviewer asks the candidate to spend next 40 minutes documenting the concept (in Google Doc).

Title: Technical Writer Technical Competency and Documentation 2

  • Overview: Interviewer explains online schema changes in CockroachDB. Candidate learns, explains back, and then documents.

  • Part 1: The interviewer is going to teach you how CockroachDB does distributed schema changes in ~20 minutes. After the lesson with the interviewer (during which you should ask questions and clarify), you’re going to explain the process back to him through a written document.

  • Teach-back questions:

    • How does CockroachDB do distributed schema changes?

    • How does CockroachDB avoid locks during schema changes?

    • How does CockroachDB change schemas? (This one seems nebulous and doesn’t prod the writer to frame the answer in an interesting way)

Title: Technical Writer Blog Editing

  • Overview: Edit a technical blog post & create a publishing strategy

    • As part of this exercise, we’ll share with you a draft of a blog post (page 2 of this document) that will run on our blog. Your task is to edit it and present your revisions. You will editing for clarity and readability, as well as identifying areas that could benefit from further detail, technical or otherwise.

  • Goals of the Cockroach Labs Blog

    • Attract readers to our blog.

    • Inform potential users about features of CockroachDB.

    • Create evangelists out of every employee.

  • Considerations: The edit does not have to be fact-perfect. This is a technical post, and in the real world, you would have access to its author for clarifying questions. It does need to get across your vision for the story arc and demonstrate your abilities as a writer and editor.