In this episode, Karl Hughes, founder and CEO of Draft.dev, shares
- Starting his career, working with startups as a software engineer
- Taking on engineering management and CTO roles
- Covid triggering a shift to get into technical writing for developers
- How to think of documentation for developers, as an intentional activity
- His views on Agile approaches and documentation and the need to right size the documentation
- How the product maturity influences the need and depth of documentation
- Why writing is the most effective way to document and communicate
- His thoughts on effectiveness of visual communication
- Writing for a diverse audience and the role of video for communicating with developers
- Importance of reviews and feedback for greater effectiveness of written content
- How he got interested in writing
- If writing is a teachable or learnable skill
- How he balances and manages his time between the maker and manager modes of working
- His experience with Shark Tank, when his company was invited to pitch at Shark Tank
- Working with a global, distributed team of software engineers
- Whether audio has a role to play as a medium for communicating with developers
- His career tips for getting into writing
Bio: Karl Hughes is a former software engineer and CTO in Chicago. He is now the Founder and CEO of Draft.dev, a specialized technical marketing agency that creates content designed to reach software engineers.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarlLHughes
Draft.dev writer application: https://draft.dev/write
