I recall my technical writing class in collage was actually pretty good and it was a required course. But when i went into industry there was not monetary connection to writing quality. Sometimes it is even better for developers to have convoluted documentation because then they make themselves indispensable to maintenance in the future.
I too took a technical writing class in college and it was very helpful.
I used to be a pretty good technical writer early in my career. Everything I did was documented throughly. Anyone could read my documentation and pick up the project.
Then we had a management change. I would literally get yelled at by my director because I was wasting time creating documentation. So I stopped. Didn't document shit, and the yelling stopped.
I'm at a new job now, and I'm trying to get back in the habit of documenting everything. Though those skills are very rusty.
