I'd venture that the parent was talking about engineers "documenting" their work for managers, whereas I think you mean documentation for other engineers. Very different audiences and thus different things to say. (And widely different lifespans for the information.)
The latter no doubt is hugely useful (I'm on a long slow effort myself to get my co-workers to document their work more robustly). But writing status reports for managers/PMs on a weekly basis is, in my not so humble opinion, a complete waste of time for the company, and a sign of poor organization.
I was hoping both purposes would be served, at this mandatory level.
I would adore any engineer who writes more blog posts walking through what they're up to more technically.
How do you feel about every-day stand ups as a means for managers/PMs to check in on employees? My own impression has been that this is at least 50%+ of the reason for stand up, and to me, I'd far prefer periodic write-ins, rather than ephemeral, undetailed, synchronous communication.
The latter no doubt is hugely useful (I'm on a long slow effort myself to get my co-workers to document their work more robustly). But writing status reports for managers/PMs on a weekly basis is, in my not so humble opinion, a complete waste of time for the company, and a sign of poor organization.