You AREN'T wrong.
Your expertise comes at one of two prices:
1) 40 hour work week and regular paycheck.
2) Exorbitant consultant fee equivalent to 3 months of 1).
They chose option 2.
If they regret it, maybe it's cheaper to churn out their reports in 23 more hours of grunt labor.
Here's 17a:
Knowledgebases are not valued by management until the primary editors leave.
I have yet to be fired because I made the company too efficient, but this fear is what makes MOST of my colleagues keep their knowledge to themselves. I'm just waiting for the day it happens.
When I was laid off due to budget cuts, my team was dismayed at how QUICKLY the knowledgebase became rife with obsolete articles and inaccuracies because I wasn't there tweaking the articles.
Technical writing may be the least valued IT profession yet the potentially the most valuable skill around. Every time I solve someone else's problem in 5 minutes, I cut my support costs in half for you. Good technical writing is never rewarded or recognized though. That's why developers write the manuals and they're so seldom useful. (The manuals, not the developers.)
