In the movie Office Space, Tom Smykowski (played by Richard Riehle) writes technical manuals for the software company. His job as a technical writer becomes a point of discussion in the film, particularly when he tries to justify his role in the company by explaining that he takes the specifications from the customers and brings them to the software engineers.

If you’re a technical writer, you’ll relate to Tom’s dilemma. For Tom the struggle wasn’t the nature of his job, rather how to explain the value of his writing activities during HR reviews. So how can you approach this?