100 Job Strategies
100 Job Strategies · 66 of 100
Missing Docs
Write the documentation they never got round to. It costs them nothing to accept.
In short
Almost every company has documentation that should exist and does not — an FAQ, a setup guide, an onboarding walkthrough, an API reference. Writing it and handing it over proves competence immediately, costs the recipient nothing, and is one of the few contributions an outsider can genuinely make.
The situation
A company's API has reference documentation that lists every endpoint and explains none of them. Their community forum contains the same six setup questions asked repeatedly, answered ad hoc each time.
Everyone involved knows a proper getting-started guide would fix it. It has been on someone's list for two years, behind everything that ships features.
Somebody outside the company writes it. Eight pages, tested against the actual API, covering the six questions that keep recurring.
There is nothing to approve, no budget to request and no risk in accepting it. It is simply better than what exists.
Why this works
Documentation occupies a peculiar position in most organisations: universally acknowledged as important, never prioritised, and quietly embarrassing.
It does not ship features, it has no obvious owner, and the people best placed to write it are the ones whose time is most expensive. So it stays undone, and the cost surfaces as support tickets, repeated forum questions and slow onboarding.
An outsider can genuinely fill that gap, which is rare. Most unsolicited contributions require internal context you do not have, but documentation of a public product can be written from outside by anyone willing to use the thing carefully.
The demonstration is unusually rich. Good documentation proves that you understood a system well enough to explain it, that you can write clearly, that you can anticipate what a reader needs, and that you notice where things are confusing. For technical writing, developer relations, support and solutions roles, that is the entire job specification.
Accepting it is frictionless, which is why response rates are high. There is no cost, no commitment and no risk in receiving a useful document, whereas most approaches from strangers ask for time or money.
It also produces something durable. Documentation you wrote, in use with your name attached, is a credential that keeps working long after the conversation.
How to run it
- 1
Find the gap by being a user
Set the product up yourself and note every point where you had to guess, search or ask. Those points are the missing documentation.
- 2
Watch where the same questions recur
Forums, community channels and public Q&A sites show which problems people hit repeatedly. That is the documentation with the highest value.
- 3
Write for the reader, not the system
A getting-started guide that follows what a new user actually does beats an exhaustive reference nobody reads.
- 4
Test everything you wrote
Follow your own instructions from a clean state. Documentation that does not work is worse than none and destroys the impression.
- 5
Deliver it in a format they can use
Match their existing structure, or submit it directly to their documentation repository if it is public. Make acceptance effortless.
- 6
Hand it over without conditions
Give it to them outright. The reciprocity only works if there is no attached request.
What to say
When it does not work
- Untested instructions. Documentation that does not actually work demonstrates the opposite of competence. Follow your own steps from scratch.
- Duplicating what exists. Check thoroughly before writing. Rewriting documentation they already have, possibly in a place you missed, wastes the effort.
- Getting the product wrong. Explaining a system you have misunderstood is publicly embarrassing. Verify your claims against actual behaviour.
- Attaching conditions. "I'll finish the rest if we talk about a role" converts a gift into a negotiation and loses the effect.
- Ignoring their style and structure. Documentation that does not fit their existing format creates work for them rather than saving it.
Documentation is the one contribution an outsider can genuinely make to a company they have never worked for — and the one nobody inside has time to make.
Questions
How do I know what documentation is missing?
Use the product yourself from a clean start and note every point where you had to guess, search or ask someone. Those friction points are precisely the documentation gaps. Their community forum, support channels and public Q&A sites are the other strong signal: questions that recur repeatedly indicate something the existing documentation fails to explain, and the answers are usually scattered across ad hoc replies rather than written down properly anywhere.
Which roles does this actually help with?
Most directly technical writing, developer relations, solutions engineering, support and product roles, because documentation demonstrates the core skill those jobs require. It also works more broadly as a way of getting attention from a company you want to join, since the contribution is concrete and the person receiving it is usually an engineer or product manager rather than a recruiter. It is less useful as evidence for roles where writing and explanation are not central.
Should I submit it as a pull request or just send it?
Offer both and let them choose. If their documentation is in a public repository, a pull request is the lowest-friction route and signals that you understand how they work, but it also commits them to a review process. Sending the document directly with an offer to submit it properly if useful covers both preferences. What matters is that accepting costs them as little effort as possible.
Is there a risk of getting the product wrong?
Yes, and it is the main failure mode. Documentation that contains errors or describes behaviour inaccurately demonstrates the opposite of what you intended, and it is publicly checkable by people who know the system intimately. The protection is testing everything you write from a clean environment and following your own instructions exactly as a new user would. Where you are uncertain about intended behaviour, say so explicitly rather than asserting.
More from 100 Job Strategies
- Backfill Sniping
- The Funding Lag
- The Unsolicited Audit
- The Vendor Side Door
- Repost Archaeology
- Ex-Employee Networks
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