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Most board members here are from the corporate world. I worked with small businesses all of my contracting career so I've always been out of step of being exposed to corporate "best" practices, instead I've dealt with the always reactionary and ignorant responses of small clients.

So, all I can do is frame this as the long term secular trend of the IT business. Businesses are increasingly retarded and are run on a short-term, panic basis. Back in the 1990s I had several small company software development projects that lasted 6 mos - 2 yrs at the longest. That collapsed in the early 2000s and then it began to be about producing something actually salable within 2-3 months.

Tech writing? I dabbled in freelance writing a few years ago and I have a heart for writers. But my experience is the farther away you get from the revenue flow in the business and more toward support roles, the more irrational and stupid the decision making will be.

My short answer is, it's definitely the business environment plus the role of millennials who now manage and run things being weasels. Low integrity, poor personal character, impulsiveness, short attention span == throwaway projects.

(I sincerely hope someone on this disengaged sleepwalking forum where people only pop in when THEY PERSONALLY have a problem can be bothered to give you an informed answer that is more than two words long and more helpful than what I can.)

^ Good observations from pxsant. Conforms to my own experiences.

This short termism and incompetency of following through used to be a hallmark of small businesses attempting complex projects. 20 years ago on boards like this I would describe such experiences I had with my clients and I would be told it was my fault for being such a loser that I worked with small businesses. In fact most borked contractors that I knew had no idea what I was talking about.

Today it's everywhere.

Thanks, folks. It's reassuring to know it's not me but the environment. Yes,  these are assignments at large, well known corporations. Most small outfits here in the Midwest see no need for tech writers or don't pay much. I try to look for tightly focused projects with an onsite manager, but even that doesn't always work. There are plenty of assignments, so finding work isn't really an issue, thank goodness. By now, my resume looks like a summary of the Fortune 500! (Joke!)

My experience is quite dated since I needed a steady income, though I've experienced the same as both an employee and contractor. There was often no planning or specs and the ones in charge were clueless. As stated, part of the problem is the millennials with their 'know it all' attitude, want it now and don't want to pay for it.

The other part as I experienced it was a combination of Agile crap and micromanagement. In order for agile to work, it assumes the team knows what it's doing. Either through its customers, a business analyst or something. You can't have the blind, leading the blind. The other part is having a manager that can't leave anything alone and thinks he alone has all the answers. So he will push what he wants and chop out what he thinks is unnecessary.

This has gotten worse as time has gone on. I've had parts of projects whacked because the client didn't want to pay for it. Had a client "renegotiate" a contract AFTER it was completed. Had a client "peer review" my code so they could steal it, without payment. Had a client intentionally derailing my progress until I was no longer needed. Later I found out I was there to buy them time, not to find a solution. I've seen projects get cancelled in the final stages of testing, where they brought in 6 to 10 contractors over a year to complete it.

I have also talked to IT managers where work was sent offshore, knowing that the project would either fail or be cancelled. Their thinking was it was cheaper to offshore it than do it here. I was thinking why do it at all but often it was out of their hands.

I've also had a 2 - 3 month assignment run 1 year. And my best one was a short term project that ran for nearly 9 years, as part of a consulting agency. So you never know what you might run into.

In general things are worse than they used to be but hopefully you find a good client. Your new norm might be many more shorter term projects.