Why Tech Comm Is a Career Path of Last Resort for Students
While on my trip to BYU Idaho last week, I had an epiphany about why tech comm will always be the career path of last resort for students. As you recall, one of my desires was to open students up to the possibility of a career in tech comm, not as a sellout/fallback career, or a career of last resort, but one that they would actively seek and strive for because of the multifaceted appeal of the technical communication career itself.
When I started the presentation, only two of the students in the room (out of about 30) said they wanted to be technical writers. Nearly half or more wanted to be editors. I’m not sure what the rest had in mind. (The creative writers and literature students weren’t even present.) I presented about tech comm, stressing all the various specializations and perspectives of the profession that go beyond click this, select that instructional writing.
Later that evening, the conference organizers took us to a Thai restaurant in town (surprisingly good for small-town Rexburg). My wife and I sat next to the son and daughter-in-law of Terryl Givens, a well-published scholar of Mormon Studies. The other conference invitee, Lynn Stegner, author of several novels, had to leave earlier in the afternoon.
While we were talking with Terryl’s son, a student at BYU, he mentioned that his emphasis was creative writing (one of five emphases in the English major). I explained that I was a technical writer. There was a long pause, and then someone changed the subject. In mentioning technical writing, there was absolutely no sign of interest in the student’s face. It was then that I realized something.
In almost every university, the English curriculum is run by literature professors and writers who teach students from day one to appreciate, study, and ponder good literature. Writers are elevated as gods in the halls of English departments. To publish a novel is the very definition of success, the pinnacle of artistic and creative achievement. Organizing a conference in which published writers and, in this case, scholars, present essays (such as “What it means to be a writer”) and read excerpts of their works only helps us hold writers in high esteem. The entire river is flowing toward the creative direction, because that’s the focus of the English curriculum: literature, creative writing, critical theory.
Somewhere down that path, literature professors feel an ethical responsibility to help students come to grips with reality. They realize that the job market for English professors is extremely tough. Publishing a novel is even more unlikely. Becoming an editor in a major New York publishing house is also a difficult path, and one that will likely start out in poverty and secretarial work for many years.
Given this, English professors add in a few practical courses, so that students can actually use their writing and analytical skills in a financially sustainable career. They add in a few classes on business and technical writing, computers and the humanities, and scientific/technical communication. But the classes are clearly not the professor’s interest or strength. They’re an assignment given to any professor who has an inkling of background in professional writing.
The tech comm classes take a backseat to Chaucer and Postmodernism and the latest novel that the English professor is drooling over. As such, the tech comm classes live up to the student’s perception: they are, in fact, boring. The teacher isn’t engaged by the material. The assignments are corny and unrealistic. It feels nothing like any of other English course. There aren’t any stories driving the plot forward, no characters to fall in love with, no fascinating world views intricately interwoven into subtle narrative details.
In the English discipline, the flow of the river is moving towards the creative. How can we expect students to suddenly develop an interest in technical writing? To do so requires them to swim against the current, against the ideology that literature professors have inculcated so deeply into their students.
When the entire English curriculum worships and elevates authors, how will students ever develop an interest in technical writing?
If our goal is to stoke the student’s interest in tech comm, it’s a battle we will never win if we fight it on the grounds of the English hallways.
In an essay on the Heart of Technical Communication, Bill Albing suggests that the solution is to decouple the tech comm emphasis from its subordinate position in the English major, and to position it on its own, perhaps even within a business setting. Bill writes:
There is this strange and persistent association of technical documentation with writing as taught in university English curricula. We need to break the connection with university English departments because they keep monopolizing the discussion about what is the core of our profession. What makes it a discipline is the business, the business value, the use of communication to allow business to operate, to make money, to accomplish its goals. The profession is too encumbered by its historical relationship to academic institutions that are steeped in the old paradigm, instead of to business, which is quicker at evolving. With their origin in academia and their continued association, many in the profession are afraid to step out and grab the baton and continue the race. The direction of technical communication is toward more complex relationships — relationships that are allowed in business but not well understood or encouraged by academia. The sooner we break those bonds, the sooner we can reestablish much needed newer ones that will help bolster our profession.
In other words, technical communication should not be taught in the context of an English department, because tech comm is about adding business value to customers, about developing relationships with users. This is not understood or encouraged in traditional English curricula.
I agree with Bill. I used to think the problem rested with me. If I could just present technical writing in an interesting enough light, if I could just show students that there’s so much more than click-this, select-that, if I were just interesting enough myself in the way I showed my thinking processes and spontaneous analyses, I could convert students away from their futile literary dreams into a more practical, interesting, and sustainable career.
But as long as tech comm remains an emphasis within an English department — a department full of literature professors who worship fiction authors and poets, and teach students to do the same — that change of mindset will never happen. Tech comm will always be the career of last resort.
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That’s a rather sad post. But the lack of interest in a technical writer post I’ve been trying to fill suggest you’re absolutely right.
I’m quite surprised that tech comm classes are a part of the English departments in US universities. You wouldn’t find this constellation in Germany. Some of the first tech writers that really studied tech comm got engineering diplomas in the end.
I think fewer German students would really say that tech comm is their last resort. Here you do choose this career.
And of course the situation in Germany shows that “[...]technical communication should not be taught in the context of an English department”
For English depts that teach tech comm, in general, I think you make a good point. But, for schools with tech comm depts or programs, I think the approach and perception are much different. Convincing an institution to invest in a dept or program that caters specifically to training students in tech comm takes some convincing – how are most tech comm programs doing these days?
I was an English major and the dept offered a certificate in professional writing and technical communication, taught exclusively by the same English professors who taught the literature classes. The tech comm classes were great because the professors had at one time been tech communicators and knew the job quite well. They knew the work environment, types of software used (the head of the dept taught the professional writing class that involved creating a manual in FM), the expectations of the business, etc., and they were really engaging and into the material, which made learning it that much more exciting. It was a great experience overall.
Tom,
As Alistair wrote, this is sad but too, too true. A big part of the problem is the way in which technical writers are viewed. We’re seen as people writing thick, boring manuals. We’re viewed as not even being in the same league as what Harlan Ellison called creative typists.
Worse still, we’re seen as being technical writers and nothing else. As we’ve discussed in the past, a lot of us in this wacky profession are more than just technical writers. We can write other things. We can create in other ways. But writing about software isn’t perceived by some as being real writing that requires creativity. It’s the province of people who couldn’t hack it as poets, novelists, or essayists.
To be honest, this isn’t restricted to technical writing. When I was in journalism school I knew a number of English majors who turned their noses up at journalism and vowed that they’ve never take a journalism course. Where are these people now? Some of them are technical writers. Some work in journalism or advertising. They may have turned to those jobs as last resorts, but some of them actually enjoy their work and are fulfilled by it.
I strongly agree that techcomm does not belong in the English departments. It’s always going to hold a marginal position there, because it’s competing with the study of literature, one of the glories of our culture. No one’s heart is going to leap when they turn from reading the Metaphysical Poets to contrasting XML models for reference documentation. More importantly, being aligned with English ensures a marginal status in the IT and business worlds. Marginalized on two fronts: what a treat.
This isn’t not just because beginner tech writers typically lack sufficient hard-tech skills: they can be acquired. IMO, it’s more a matter of tech writing not be sufficiently integrated with informational processes in IT (or business generally). As a skill, tech writing is a key element of business strategy, business analysis, marketing, and training. As a practice, it ought to be driven by the same processes. Testers often get their testing scenarios from what were originally business requirements; writers of user documentation should do the same. Instead, there’s often a very loose coupling, where the user documentation is created in an artisan-style process off the side of the development process, with the tech writers relying on mental they construct themselves based on what they can scavenge from the software and technical documentation.
My solution? Let humanities and social sciences do what they can do: provide a liberal education – meaning, a first-class education for the mind not tied to specific career outcomes. Impress on students that almost all of them going to work outside academics, relying on their ability to organize and communicate information clearly. In the mean time, fill your boots with the Metaphysical Poets, Anatolian archaeology, Bismarckian politics… whatever will engross you and stretch your intellectual limits for those irreplaceable four (or five) years.
After graduation (though these days, you may not get a decent liberal education till the Masters level), you’ll need some kind of training, but not a lot. If you’re working in IT, you’ll need some technical knowledge, obviously, but just enough. Most tech writing training should come out of the same universe as the training for business analysts, project managers, and (more recently) content strategists and the like, areas that give you a broad oversight over business and development processes. These are areas where someone with a good liberal education can thrive, often better than people coming over from the technical track. In fact, one of the best business analysts I know claims that first-class business analysts almost always come out of the liberal arts and social science.
This is much more of a do-it-yourself path than, say, the German system, but a lot of professionals I know have done this. The German system might be better, in fact, but we are very far away from that in North America.
As for what you might call the dinner-party issue, I don’t see any solution. I was tech writer, my wife was assistant editor at a prestigious publisher. I made 50% more as she did, but at parties people talked to her, just for the proximity to fame and glamour. Uttering the phrase “technical writer” made me invisible. So I would say I was in communications and change the subject.
I couldn’t agree more with your comment. After graduating with a literature major, I landed my first job as a technical writer. Though indirectly, I believe I benefited a lot from reading Shakespeare, Japanese haikus, and Umberto Eco. Good writing – whether creative or functional – always involves the intellect and the imagination. I’m not sure if studying writing from a vocational standpoint would have worked better for my career.
Like what you’ve suggested, I took training courses related to authoring tools and IT while already employed. Just recently, I finished my master’s in communication. I enrolled in a social science-oriented program (with subjects such as “Political Economy of Media” and “Sociology of Knowledge”) but did a technical communication-related thesis anyway.
Just a thought: for concerns on exposing students to the business value of technical writing, why not move the program from English departments to Communication departments instead? Technical communication is more akin to interdisciplinary, practice-oriented fields such as media production, public relations/advertising, and corporate communication. It’s a good alternative to assigning tech comm programs to engineering schools.
“…with the tech writers relying on mental they construct…”
This should be:
“…with the tech writers relying on mental MODELS they construct…”
I think it depends on the institution. Some schools have set up interdisciplinary project teams with engineering, science, and business students, and try to include tech com students in the mix. My daughter went to DeVry, where her required English classes included basic technical writing.
But as long as the tech com curriculum is treated as a poor step child of the English department, it will remain an alternate degree path that students find when they realize that they weren’t meant to be whatever their first degree choice had been, but won’t become one sought out by students because that is what they are looking for. Oddly enough, after I had decided I didn’t want to be an architect, I was invited by one of my English professors to be his first degree candidate in the BS in Scientific Writing program he was setting up.
Colleges and universities that want to emphasize their engineering or technical programs consider technical communications a useful adjunct to that market niche. Those with primarily literary aspirations probably never will.
I’m glad someone out there is addressing this.
My school had one solitary tech comm class, in the English department. 70% of the students were engineering majors that were there only because it filled a writing requirement for them and they didn’t feel like tackling Chaucer.
Shows you what they thought of the field. Totally out of touch with reality, very frustrating. I guess all the English majors that aren’t teaching now are probably working at call centers. I wasn’t even an English major and I did go with the field.
So, your post brings up the question: where does tech comm belong in universities? Marketing? Business? Engineering? Those departments would have to bring in an English professor to teach it anyway…
Tom, you should draft a letter of your recommendations on this topic and send it to the deans of all the major colleges you can think of.
Tech comm programs are tightly associated with tech writing, instantly designating it as a writing discipline which almost always comes under the English dept. Though I had a good experience with the tech comm program offered by my English dept, I do believe that it should have its own Tech Comm or Info Design dept that pulls from courses in other depts, such as engineering, English, CS, design, education, etc.
Bentley University, for example, has a Information Design dept, that offers programs in human factors and corporate communication. The highly rated tech comm program at the University of Washington, which was once part of the Engineering dept, is now its own Human Centered Design and Engineering dept:
http://www.hcde.washington.edu/navhcde/department-history
As much as I hate to admit it, this has been my path exactly. I remember the Technical Writing unit we did in my Rhetoric course, sometime in the second year of my English Degree. I remember thinking it was just something I had to endure on my journey to becoming a published poet or novelist.
12 years later, I’m back in college doing a post-grad in Technical Communications, and I’m repeatedly asking myself what took me so long! Was I really so delusional as to think I would lead a bohemian Writer’s life? Apparently.
But I’m not sure that separating Technical Writing from the English Department is really the way to go. Maybe someday, but before that can happen, I think it needs to become a Cooperative Stream with the Business Studies Department (or whatever). But you’re right in that the way it is taught needs to change… like 12 years ago.
It’s the same story everywhere. Technical Writing is the last resort if nothing good works out. More than 90% of the technical writers have zigzagged their way from various other fields and professions and have landed into technical writing only to find they are now trapped and nowhere else to go. There are very few writers who are really passionate about the technical writing profession and enjoy their work.
Hi, Tom – This is an excellent post and the comments too are revealing.
When in college, I never opted for a course in computers because I had some kind of an unknown phobia about it. I never wanted to learn anything that had to do with computers. Instead, I studied economics, psychology, and accounting. Today, I am a technical writer, writing user guides and online help for enterprise solutions. Though I still am not a techie, I have a fair knowledge of how applications are coded and tested. I have learned enough HTML and XML to get by.
Today we can’t escape technology if we wanted to. It would seem natural for most young people to want to make a career in technology by enrolling for programs in Computer Science and the like. So, I feel that those students that choose to study Literature make a deliberate decision of not wanting to work in the IT industry. They probably DO NOT want to be those silicon valley geeks – it doesn’t interest them. I am a good example of this. Why, then, would they evince any interest in Technical Writing, which is an offshoot/appendage of the IT industry (as they see it)? Naturally, they would be repelled by the very thought of it, because that is not their dream!
We need to remember that young people are idealistic, and do believe that they can follow their dreams. Its only with time that reality strikes.
Any ideas how this post and the comments affect the odd student who was genuinely interested in tech comm until 10 minutes ago?
That’s a good question….haha!
20-odd years ago it may have been acceptable to suggest that a technical writer should have an english degree. Today, the idea seems plain quaint.
There may be uses for creative writers in technical marketing, especially for those that are multi-lingual. Unfortunately, those writers often rely on business and technical folks whose argots befuddle all save their most immediate colleages.
Technical writers bridge these divides. They have no fixed place in an organiation chart, and career progression can be, well, interesting.
The best technical writers of the future may come from the ranks of those considering technical journalism.
After all, every writer has a novel gathering dust somewhere. Not completing it may well be more an indicator of maturity than personal failure.
I agree that separating tech writing from the English Department would be for the better. As much as I love that department, they don’t have a good feel for the realities of the business world. That’s why phrases such as “Ivory Tower” exist for academia. They tend to look down their noses a bit at the workaday world and vocational considerations. In their world, literature sells. In the everyday business world, not so much. We need practical skills here. Maybe the computer department would be more accepting?
I signed up to the rss feed.Thank you for your post.
I really like it . Thanks!
When I read the first half of the post, my first thought was that it was a matter of context–you were looking at a university rather than a college. Then I remembered that the US doesn’t have the same distinction between the two that we do here in Canada, I don’t think.
I know that when I was going to university, the English in universities meant English literature–I don’t think there was a single professional communications course in the English department. Maybe there was in the Business department. If you wanted professional communications, you either went to the Continuing Studies department of the university or you went to a college with a Communications program. There was a division between creative and theoretical English (university) and practical English (college). I think that’s changing as universities try to prepare students a bit more for the reality most of them will face.
I liked the suggestion of combining techcomm with information design, maybe interaction design as well. I think that’s a better fit than English literature.
A great epiphany, Tom. Based on the comments so far, it would be interesting to ask everyone that if tasked with inventing the New University for Technical Communications, what courses would be most relevant?
When I tried this exercise, I surprised myself with a very broad list, because as others have mentioned, today’s tech writer must “do it all”. Here’s my short list: English composition and editing, computer science, business (financial, ROI, strategy, and influencing skills), graphic design (vector and bitmap-based imaging, photography, diagramming, swim lanes, etc.), and project management.
But alas, a program like this would be considered vocational rather than liberal, and that is surely why English departments keep to the liberal and academic code and avoid prescribing vocational tracks that might actually make a graduate more marketable. I’m soooo confused!
Well, what we do is rather more craft than art, is it not? But it’s not a vocation, such as becoming a teacher, doctor or priest. Never mistake practical ability as somehow subservient to artistic endevour. I’d suggest that craft is a base requirement for art. After all, an artist lacking the skills to express that art must be the very definition of frustrated angst! I’m sure that many professors work hard to help people build the skills to express themselves. But a reluctantance to encourage students to test their skills beyond academia, as if the outside world were somehow tainted, is unforgivable. As every parent knows, at some point you set your children free.
Sometimes (or manytimes) reality hits hard. There is no enough awareness among the students about technical communication. And of course, tech comm may not be a cup of tea for those techno geeks.
“You people have a great patience to create those online helps and manuals” – I used to get these kind of comments from my fellow developers frequently.
When will colleges and universities wake up and realize that today’s success depends on how well we incorporate technology into other disciplines? In the mid ’80s I developed a high tech PR curriculum for Boston U. College of Communications. I did it because the same need existed then: having people with good PR skills enter the high tech marketing field. I’m proud to say that one of my students now runs one of the largest and most successful high tech PR agencies in the US. Others are still in the field and doing well. But how many made the shift? Not many. There is no reason to fear technology, but we seem to breed that fear into students at an early age. Too bad. Our schools and our economy are worse off because of it.
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My name is Nitika and I am a Technical Writer by choice. I have been working since 3.5 years in this field and I am very happy……..
If I go back from where I start, I had a very interesting career path.
I started my career from the BPO sector, and then started working in a NGO as a content writer, while working in NGO my sister suggested me to search about Technical Writing field. After doing a lot of research I was convinced about this field and did a course in Technical Writing from Bangalore.
Soon after completing my course I got a job in a finance sector in Gurgaon as a Technical Writer and came across many new opportunities. Suddenly I got a big twist in my and that was “MY Marriage”. I shifted to Bangalore and currently working in a Telecom Company.
This was a small snapshot of my interesting career path.
I am satisfied with the work I am doing and always try to look for the next new development in this field.
But fine one day someone asked me a very simple question, which was, “What is the career growth in Technical Writing?” I explained him the profile but somehow, I was not very confident with the answer I gave. And since then, I am searching for the correct answer. Someone suggested that I should go for further studies like:
• Doing a course in Quality Management
• Doing a Master’s degree in Technical Writing
• Doing a course in Technical Communication and etc.
My search is still on but I am not able to find my answers…
Now, I really want to do some further studies in my field and want to move ahead, but I am not getting the right path and I don’t know, “Which direction to go?”
I really need suggestions from the people who have explored all the different opportunities related to Technical Writing and have achieved success.
In one of your blogs you had written about using visuals to communicate better and now I see visuals in the blogs more often than earlier
Amazing.
I am an English grad turned into technical communicator and the only reason why I started with this profession (when I had absolutely no clue what it was!) was good money! Needless to say, my literature fellows saw me as a traitor as I didn’t stay true to the “noble profession” of teaching literature. But what the heck! I am enjoying my current work a lot. I agree how as English students we used to look down upon getting into the “crass” form of writing (thats what my professor had once declared when we asked what is Technical Writing!!)
Shweta, I’m glad the tech comm career path turned out well for you. I don’t think tech comm would survive without a substantial salary. It’s a financial reality, but fortunately the career is engaging and has depth.
When I graduated in 1996, I had a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications (Public Communciations emphasis) with a minor in Creative Writing, which I arrived at after much deliberation.
I was an English major for a couple of years before I realized that the English department, at its core, believed that the “author’s message” existed within the writing itself–completely ignoring the fact that any piece of writing involves an exchange between the author and the reader that is merely facilitated by the work. The Communications department, on the other hand, believed that if no one read or took the time to understand or think about the work for whatever reason, there was, effectivly, no message at all, because no communication had occurred. The audience–which to my mind plays a key role in writing–mattered to the communications department, while the author was the preminent focus for the English department.
I graduated with a BS in communications instead of a BA in English because I wanted to have a conversation with my audience, even if it’s not a literary conversation. As to how I became a technical writer with a public communications degree, that was more by accident than anything else
I didn’t come away with this message. Every program is different, of course, but if you want to unpack this idea more, go for it. It seems like the rhetorical triangle was drilled into me constantly during all my writing classes.