Collaborative Post: Giving Guidance to a Masters Student about Technical Writing Careers
I received the following email from Anna, a literature PhD candidate who is considering changing career paths from teaching into technical writing. This is a collaborative post, so if you have advice to share, please add it in the comments below.
1. What is it like doing tech writing on a freelance basis? (My understanding is that you have a full-time, permanent position, but since you’re so active in the community, I thought you might have more insight about this than I do.) It has been difficult for me to adjust to sitting in the same cubicle for eight hours a day. It’s not intolerable, but I would be happier with a job where I could decide where I do my work (at least sometimes), and freelancing seems like one way to achieve that. Given some of what I’ve read about the profession, it seems as if permanent full-time jobs are starting to give way to temporary contract gigs anyway. So do you think freelancing is feasible way to go? Have you considered going the freelance route instead of the permanent route? If so, why did you decide against freelancing? Are there permanent jobs where the writer doesn’t have to be in an office for 40 hours a week?
I have never done freelance technical writing. The only freelance I do is WordPress consulting. I have a family to support, and I prefer the stability and benefits that come with a full-time company job. However, rather than freelancing, it’s more common to be a contractor — the difference being that a contractor works on site for a short period of time, whereas a freelancer perhaps works from home. A lot of people who contract really enjoy it. Employers will perceive less risk if you’re employed on a contract basis rather than full-time.
As for siting in a cubicle 8 hours a day, yeah, that’s somewhat of a drag. Your current job may have you doing more grunt work than is usual for more mid- or senior-level technical writing jobs. I do attend meetings almost every day (hence I shift from my cubicle chair to a conference room chair), but overcoming the sedentary nature of an IT job is difficult. I balance all the sitting with regular games of basketball.
If you want to move around, you certainly can — interviewing subject matter experts, interacting with users, attending project meetings, going in and out of your recording room, and so on.
2. You posted some slides that you used in an STC conference for a student-oriented presentation. One of the slides that I found particularly interesting addressed the issue of whether tech writing could turn out, for some, to be some kind of trap. The worry was something like this: what if I go into the field and decide I don’t like it? Will it be too late for me to go into any other field without having to start from scratch? You proceeded to list a number of different fields that you thought an experienced tech writer would be well positioned to move into. (One that I find particularly interesting is UX-related work.) But I’m a bit skeptical about this. Do you know people who’ve managed career shifts like this? If so, did they have to go back to school or do anything drastic to prepare for the change? I do like the idea that tech writing might be more flexible than my previous career path, but for some reason I have a hard time imagining someone moving from this field into another one. If you have any stories about people who’ve done that (whether they went into IT, development, UX design, information architecture or whatever), that would be very encouraging. (I couldn’t find any such stories.)
Many people see technical writing as a transitional career. There are a lot of related disciplines that tech writers can cross into: content management, XML, usability, information architecture, visual design, interaction design, content strategy, marketing and communications, e-learning, screencasting, project management, taxonomy, business analysis. If you have the incentive and drive to move into one of these related disciplines, you certainly can.
My comment about windows of opportunity closing is probably more focused on me. I have a family of five to support, I own a home, I’m 35 — to suddenly decide to try law or medicine, or to rethink my career path entirely (e.g., marine biologist) is pretty hard. Luckily, I’m quite satisfied with my path. I have found a lot of creative fulfillment in the tech comm field and its related disciplines. And that fulfillment isn’t in writing dry procedural tasks all day, which I will confess gets boring. I’m fascinated by information architecture and findability, screencasting, visual design, and blogging. It’s been a while since I last sat down and wrote a how-to topic. Today I spent most of my time writing a screencast script. Yesterday I edited several web articles.
Tech comm provides a lot of cross-disciplinary opportunities. The field is wide, with a lot of room to move around. Also, your background with literature will prepare you with an analytic, problem-solving mind — perfect for tech comm.
3. Suppose I decide to go full speed ahead with technical writing. Where do I go from here? If I do decide to stay in this field, I’d probably get involved with some open-source documentation projects (to build a portfolio, since the stuff I’m writing now is owned by my company), create a website where I could showcase my work, build up my technical skills a bit (I’m a novice programmer, and I could work on that some more), join STC (to network and also learn more about the profession) and perhaps find small contract jobs I could work on to make some extra cash and establish contacts. Do these sound like reasonable goals? Any other things I should shoot for?
I think you have the necessary experience and education to break into the field. Many jobs require at least 2 years of experience, so maybe stick with your current location or job for another year as you build up your portfolio. Then move to a tech hub city and find a recruiting agency that can help you land a job. Other tech writers can help ground and guide you.
Moving to the city where you want to work is key. Few companies hire out of state employees at the entry-level. If you don’t have to earn a lot of money, you could perhaps get by living in inexpensive housing. One day I’d like to move to California, but I’m not sure I could afford it, and I quite like my life here in Utah.
I have a PhD in American Lit and I taught for five years as a TA. In 2000 I was very fortunate to land a job as a tech writer for a small start-up (after failing at getting a teaching job due to the extreme supply/demand problems still facing the humanities). There are some very real differences between being a teacher in academia and being a tech writer.
The first, as you point out, is that you have zero independence and have to sit in a chair all day. I’ve been working in this field for over 10 years now, for a variety of small to large firms, as a captive and contractor, and I have yet to experience a non-cubicle-type, minimum 40-hours-a-week environment. If you can’t see yourself doing that for the long haul, then I would definitely continue looking. That would not likely change whether you were a captive, contractor, or freelancer. The reality of this job is that while you may get to work on a variety of different things (if you’re lucky), pretty much all of it requires sitting at a desk for long periods.
The second thing to consider is that unlike teaching, tech writers typically do not get a lot of respect, support, promotions, and other related job perks. When you are teaching, you are in control, you design the class, you have a lot of authority, independence, and prestige.
Personally, I’ve enjoyed tech writing and am happy to be doing it. However, it’s because I get to live in a city I love, work regular hours, am paid well, and don’t have to deal with tons of bureaucratic challenges, all of which academia would not be able to offer me.
Hope this is helpful.
It’s unfortunate that you haven’t gotten the chance to experience freelancing and coworking. I do some tech writing from the comfort of an awesome, low-priced workspace in which I’m free to pontificate, nap, have a beer, and do my own thing with other laid-back but effective professionals.
Look into it – the only down side to working for yourself is the horrifying cost of benefits.
(Ps – I work at candyissweet.com)
I just completed a move from tech writing to UX. Still early in my career, but here are my thoughts:
- PhD = over-educated for the IT industry. Most managers value experience over formal education. People with advanced degrees at the level we’re talking about are often seen as having their head in the clouds while others do the actual work. (I’m being very blunt here; obviously there are some areas and companies in which an advanced degree is highly valued. Tech writing is not one of them, in my experience.)
- There are no university programs that address UX anyway (or IxD or IA, for that matter), so you probably wouldn’t be going back to school. My team bootstrapped it using online research, books, conferences, and consultants.
- There are two main paths within UX: research, and design. If you’re into psychology or research, there are opportunities to do user interviews, user testing, and best practice research. If you’re an artistic type, there are opportunities to be innovate, solve problems, and design helpful software.
- Tech Writing to UX is a fairly common and accepted move because technical communicators tend to come with the skill set and interests that are important to UX: understanding of usability and interaction with the product, empathy with users, attention to detail, more concerned with the front end than the back-end architecture, etc.
I ultimately felt a bit stifled and undervalued in tech comms. Now I have my hands on real products that people use, I can delight users, and I can be creative. Possible, but difficult in tech comms.
As Tom mentioned, there are many ways to establish your “niche” in technical writing. From my experience talking with other tech writers (through STC networks), most small to mid-sized companies typically have varying technical writing levels.
Entry-level positions will definitely require sitting in a cubicle for most of the day. This is because these positions generally necessitate less education, less experience, and therefore allow exercising less independent judgment. As you “move up the ladder”, you can expect more freedom to develop ideas and theories and to put them to practical use. Correspondingly, the more responsibility you receive leads to limited supervision; i.e., with laptop in tow, you can do a lot of work from anywhere. For instance, I have the ability to work from home, in another office, on a different floor of the building, on the train, et cetera.
In short (I know, too late), “tech writing” doesn’t have to be sitting in a cubicle for 40 hours a week. If you find the right combination of your interests, expertise, and a fitting business environment, you can enjoy all of the perks of “freelancing” without the disadvantages.
Regarding:
“One day I’d like to move to California, but I’m not sure I could afford it, and I quite like my life here in Utah.”
Funny, one day I’d like to move to Utah, but I’m not sure I could afford it! (I live in California and from my research, the salaries just don’t compare)
Re the California – Utah thing, really? In Utah, you can get a huge home in a nice neighborhood for 300K, and drive comfortably to work without much traffic congestion. I thought in California it would cost twice that and you’d have to sit in your car while traffic crawls along at a snail’s pace.
I’ve spend fifteen years as a (mostly) cubical bound contractor or employee. Over that time I have gained 100 pounds and experienced endless back pain from bad chairs and too much weight/inactivity. When I look to any one single factor about my career that I hate, it is being bound to a desk. Consider this carefully before venturing down the technical writer path, because it is a very inactive job and it will have health consequences you’ll have to deal with.
I attribute my weight gain to each new kid that we’ve had. Have you ever considered sitting on a ball, like the guy in this photo?
The graphic designer at my old job worked sitting on such a ball, and my girlfriend is considering it too. They say it can do wonders to soothe back pains and stay in (relatively) good shape while working sitting down 8 hours a day!
As for the main subject, I have not much to add since I have been a technical writer for less than two years. However, I do want to say that I was also studying literature (French in my case, I’m from Montreal, Quebec) and I was considering teaching at college level before landing my first job. Having been a fan of computers and technology since my childhood and having some basics in programming, it was only natural to associate this passion and my writing skills in order to venture into TW territory.
At my current job, our TW team (we’re 2) has a lot of liberty for developing new tools, help and documentation for the company’s software. So even if I’m sitting at my desk all day long, I get to tackle lots of challenges, take decisions, etc. I work closely with my colleague to setup projects and decide which direction we want to take for this or that aspect of our work. But then again, I consider my situation somewhat special, as the two of us got hired for revamping the whole company’s documentation library and processes. This is not something that happens everyday.
As it has been said, a large part of why you enjoy your job is the environment, the conditions (including the salary) and the people, everything in regards to what are your hopes and needs of course. I’d say, if you’re tempted by TW, go for it! You could find a pleasant and rewarding job! And if you don’t, well, it will have been a great experience and you’ll doubtless have developed unique skills that will be helpful somewhere else.
Hey Hugo, from Montreal ? Always nice to meet people in my area.
Mr. O’Neil–
A thoughtful and more encouraging comment than mine. It’s good to hear a viewpoint like that, as I had gotten fairly discouraged in my tech writing jobs. In your case, perhaps advanced degrees would be more important.
You should definitely move to Utah. Salary is lower, but your modest home doesn’t cost half a million dollars, so it works out nicely. Less crowded, more beautiful, and not as much crime and earthquakes!
Utah is a great place to raise a family, or to go snowboarding and rock climbing, but it lacks the big city life. If you’re young and want to see the world, go live in a big city like New York City or Boston or San Francisco. Once you get married and have a family, and you’re tired of the hustle and bustle of urban life, then move to Utah or some other more suburban area.
I live here in Oregon and am considering taking a part-time/contract job doing ISO certification technical writing. What is the average pay per hour for this type of a job here in Portland? I have a few years experience in technical writing.
Even a ballpark figure is fine.
I don’t live in portland, but looking at the job ads there I would guess $30 to $35 an hour
Thanks! It helps to have a starting point of reference.
Happy to help
When contemplating a technical writing career, I think it is very important to realize that TW is not a homogenous profession. There are no formal definitions of the divisions in the profession, but I think they can reasonably be categorized like this:
* The ghost writer: Essentially an editor, taking technical content prepared by others and improving the prose and layout. May work by interviewing experts, but does not strive to fully understand the technology they are writing about. Markets themselves based on writing skills and makes no attempt to build up significant technical qualifications.
* The generalist: More technical in focus, the generalist works rather like a good technical journalist. They are not experts in the specific technology they are writing about, but they do the research to learn what they need to know to write useful docs. Their personal standard tends to be, “I won’t write about anything if I don’t understand it.”
* The specialist: Well versed in a particular technology area. Generally has been a practitioner of the craft the product is used for, at least to some degree. For example, writers who specialize in writing programming manuals or API references have usually have work or hobby experience programming. The personal standard for a specialist is not to write about something until they have done it.
Demand and salary vary widely among these three groups. It is possible, for instance, that in the same city the market for ghostwriters will be saturated, jobs scarce, and salaries low, while the market for writers in a particular specialty, say medical writing, could be booming and offering six-figure incomes.
Then there is the issue of B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) tech writers. To be effective, a tech writer has to have a pretty good grasp of what their reader needs. If you are writing in a B2C company, your readers are consumers like yourself, so you will have a reasonable idea of their needs. If you are in a B2B company, your users are specialist employees using your product as a tool to make their living. If you have no exposure to the kinds of work they do, it is harder to understand their needs.
What is freelancing like: Depends on which type of tech writer you want to be. A good specialist TW will likely be in high demand and be able to pick and choose their assignments. Many work madly on a project until it is done and then go on vacation for six weeks before they take another. They can also often work from home and work for clients anywhere in the world. Generalists are more likely to live the cube life. Ghost writers are likely to find the market crowded, and the contracts outsourced. They often seem to drift towards marketing jobs.
Is it a trap: Corporately it is certainly a trap. The career ladder for tech writers ends at the director level. Nobody from tech writing makes it to the VP suite without taking a long detour. For a good generalist, it may be a trap in the sense that it can be hard to match the salary if you want to move to other writing jobs. Specialists are confined to a narrow field, of course, but they wouldn’t be specialists if they weren’t happy to stay in that field.
Where do you go from here: Decide which kind of tech writer you want to be and figure out what you need to do get there. A ghost writer in a B2C company is the easiest place to start, but the competition is fierce and the remuneration can be low. Plus there is a lot of outsourcing at this level. Also, these jobs can be very tool sensitive. If you don’t have experience in the exact set of authoring and publishing tools they are using, you will likely not get in the door. Word and/or FrameMaker skills would help land jobs at this level.
If you have the research skills and the aptitude, try to jump right to generalist. The pay is better and the work is more varied. Tool knowledge is less of an arbiter here, but it can still make the difference between two otherwise similarly qualified candidates. The biggest key to success at this level is generally your ability to gain the respect of the development staff. If they don’t respect your knowledge and intelligence, you will have a pretty tough time. Real technical writing samples will be important to getting a first job at this level.
From there, if you have the interest, you can work your way to becoming a specialist — but be aware that it is hard to make this move without a relevant degree or work experience in the field of specialty. At this level, it is unlikely you will even get asked about authoring tools. Tool knowledge is generally not a deciding factor in hiring at this level. Proving yourself as a specialist in the field is usually the key.
Hello Mr. Tom,
This is the first time I’ve been to your site and I find this really fruitful and encouraging. The best thing, (other than your post) of your site is the interaction with your readers, they give comments with liberty and you respond them in a very friendly way.
Kavita Prasad
Hi All,
Loved the conversation on Technical Writing, i work for a bpo and would like to shift my career to technical writing. i am sure you all experienced people will let me know how to go about it please.
I appreciate your help,
Regards,
Prasad
Hi folks
One thing I haven ‘t seen mentioned is technical aptitude and ability to absorb lots of technical info. I’ve been a tech writer on and off for the past 10+ years. I’ve found my willingness to set up & use fairly complex enterprise software & test what I write, and my interest in understanding the business case has been what’s helped me land jobs relatively easily.
It’s a good way to make a decent living, but do not expect to use your literature degree much. Tech writing is more akin to the report & proposal writing done for a Commerce degree than the writing used in literary analyses!
That being said, the other thing to keep in mind is there’s relatively little writing in tech writing. Often you simply update existing docs–especially as a newbie–but most of my time nowadays is devoted to asking questions, testing, and formatting. And when ready to deliver your docs you can spend enormous amounts of time fiddling with publishing tools and getting them onto the website.
Granted, I currently work for a company in Europe that has a very ‘startup’ mentality with rather, er, primitive doc. In a larger, more established firm, like the others have said, senior writers spend a huge chunk of time in more project management-related tasks – coaching junior writers, attending or leading meetings, clarifying priorities, estimating work hours, giving updates..etc which are all excellent transferable skills.
Lastly, I will also echo that regardless of employment type (freelance, contract, or are bona-fide full-time employee) the work is extremely sedentary. Whether it’s in a meeting, while interviewing a subject-matter-expert, or writing the doc, you will be sitting in a chair and more often than not staring at a screen.
Cheers
Sarah
Again, another interesting conversation here! I always like to drop into threads like this one because sometimes I have a good option to pose for folks just like Anna.
First, the bold disclaimer….we’re one of the advertisers on this blog–SPSU’s Information Design & Communication program (IDC). We’re a grad program–formerly called Tech Comm–and we’re located at Southern Polytech. Yes, it’s mostly an engineering school, BUT we embrace all the good things a polytechnic has to offer. AND, our courses are offered online. No moves to California involved.
For Anna, a person with a Ph.D. in Lit, it’s important to know that the field is changing–there’s all kinds of options beyond the cubicle. While the traditional jobs in “Tech Writing” are still out there, the field is also expanding to include new technologies and communication practices. Now is not the time to be mired in the kind of thinking that situates Tech Comm in its 1989 cubicle. It’s a brave new world (apologies to Huxley) out there.
Our program–like many others offered by polytechnics–has a curriculum that’s addressing the changes in the profession. For example, I’m a prof who teaches Information Architecture, Writing for New Media, and Content Strategy (just wrapped this last one up). One of my colleagues teaches Human Performance Technology; another colleague–Carol Barnum–has a Usability Testing course. These aren’t your typical courses and we’re not your typical program.
So, what’s a way to be more qualified? How about a graduate certificate in technical communication? At the grad level, a certificate is 6-course credential. The courses are the same ones in our M.Sc. degree, but the certificate is a way to develop a core competency in the field. For someone with a Ph.D., the certificate is an excellent way to make a move into the profession.
And, if you want to stay in academia? A certificate in TC will make you very marketable for teaching. Just saying…..
That actually sounds like a very valuable program. I’m glad to hear that academic avenues are opening up for these fields.
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If you’re an amateur programmer, you may have the aptitude for API documentation. I’ve felt more valued in that role than when writing end-user documentation. APIs can’t be used without documentation, so it’s considered essential.
Anna, you’re right. There are more contract T/W positions out there right now than there were in the “good ol’ days.” Quite simply, it is more cost-effective for a hirer to bring you in for a “single task-oriented project” than to take you on full-time where they’d have to provide healthcare, dental, 401(K), disability, etc. A contractor gets none of these but rather a good hourly wage to (supposedly) offset the benefits you’d otherwise receive in a full-time, perm. position. Contract tech. writing (nobody “freelances” T/W) can be a feast-or-famine proposition. Times are tough, and often 3-6 month gigs (they’d like you to finish up the project in 3 months naturally) are all that’s out there it often seems. A Lit. background will not prepare you for the I.T. world: not only is today’s technology a daunting and ongoing learning curve, but the sort of writing style(s) you’re used to would be quite foreign to you. For all you education, you’d likely be a proverbial fish out of water if you venture outside of Academia! In these uncertain times — and if I were in your shoes — I’d take that PhD and go for a full professorshp position with a university and work toward tenure. It’s cold out here in T/W land, and we have no trade union or job security of any sort backing us up when the employer’s bottom line goes south and they start doling out the pink slips! I know this all sounds pretty bleak but I gotta be honest with you: there are risks to T/W to be sure and it’s not for the faint-hearted. Good luck with whatever you decide, but by all means think things through before you throw a good thing away!
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