I would strongly disagree with the point that Technical Writers are a waste.

The basic idea of using a person who does not see things from developer's perspective for writing the technical documentation is to present the information to a non-technical person as simple as possible.

Therefore the role of the Technical Writer is to put himself in the position of the end user and try to cope with the developer's point of view at the same time.

Take a developer and make him write the User Guide. Question is if another developer will be able to use it, not to mention the end users.