[jzellis]

I think your concerns are legit, but it's not necessarily the reviewer's fault that they're on three deadlines and don't have the time to give your product the care and concern it deserves. It's probably the editor's or the publisher's.

I'm a world class writer but I stopped doing it for a living a long time ago. Why? Because as media moved from print to online, the work was devalued. I've worked for 25 cents a word sometimes, which was pretty decent when one 1200 word piece could pay rent back then. Nowadays, writers are offered $25 per article flat with no compensation for rewrites. Staff positions pay badly for too much work but are as coveted as C suite gigs are in the tech world. Maybe more so.

So if the reviewer is staff, they might be assigned three or four reviews in a given week on top of other work. If they're freelance, they might have to take on more just to make their rent. This is because your average magazine staffer who's not management pulls about as much as a Starbucks manager, and was ever thus, unless you got in at Vanity Fair or The Atlantic back in the Before Times.

It's like when I was reviewing albums for $50 a pop: I'd get a stack of them to review and cue up track one and if I didn't get hooked pretty quick, I'd just pop in the next one.

Your device arrived damaged, which is absolutely no one's fault, but your reviewer doesn't have time or honestly impetus to give it a second chance. Not for whatever they're getting paid for that review, which is not much at all.

It's just bad luck, is all. And yes, it's not fair and, yes, you're right to complain, but it's not as simple as "tech writer lazy".

(And if anyone's response is "They accepted the job, they should do their best at it no matter how little it pays", I'm guessing you've never had to duck your landlord to try not to get evicted before the freelance check you've been hunting up for three weeks arrives. There's a reason I'd rather make a living as a mediocre coder than a very good writer these days - at its worst, the tech industry is more renumerative and stable than the publishing industry is.)

[shkkmo]

> I think your concerns are legit, but it's not necessarily the reviewer's fault that they're on three deadlines and don't have the time to give your product the care and concern it deserves. It's probably the editor's or the publisher's.

You wrote it, you don't get to dodge the responsibility like that. Professional integrity still matters.

> It's like when I was reviewing albums for $50 a pop: I'd get a stack of them to review and cue up track one and if I didn't get hooked pretty quick, I'd just pop in the next one.

That seems unethical.

> There's a reason I'd rather make a living as a mediocre coder than a very good writer these days

As coders, we also have an ethical responsibility to pushback against code that will harm people.

We need more writers to say no to writing stories with insufficient time/resources to do it ethically same as we need more developers who push back against building unethical products.

[tobr]

> I'm a world class writer

This is awkward, but I think you mean ”I'm a world-class writer”.

[handoflixue]

Be kind. Don't be snarky.