I love it when people want me to write a work instruction for some extremely complicated, highly context-dependent activity. And of course to write it in such a way that someone with no experience can follow it end to end.

This is not possible. Just not.

If you could have some document telling an intern what to do, you WOULDN’T NEED ME.

Sure, I’ll write that document. I’ll write it and then I’ll spend the next three days either explaining to said Level 1 person how to do the actions, actually doing the actions for them, or correcting the huge fuck-ups that result when management convinces itself that 20 years of experience can be distilled meaningfully into a Word document.

I know, it sucks paying me such a sum for what I do, that you can’t yet outsource it to someone chained to a wall and beaten with bamboo rods on the hourly.

But that’s the way it is. The intern can’t build a datacenter. The intern can’t even boot their own machine up.

If I could write a work instruction for most of what I do, I’d write a script and sit at my desk and lollygag while the script did my work for me.

Simple as that.