I'd Rather Be Writing » careers

Q&A: What should my major be for a career in technical writing?

Tom Johnson — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:47:02 +0000

I received the following question from a reader:

I’m a 20 year old college student and I just finished up my first year at a local community college and I was wondering what my major should be if I want to become a technical writer when I eventually graduate. Right now my counselors have me majoring in General Science (b/c my dream job would be to work as a writer at Scientific American) but I’m wondering if that’s the right path I should be taking. I’m new to this site but I’ve already found a wealth of great information by just browsing about. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

If your dream job is science writing, follow a science major. Remember that having skills to write is only one element of technical writing. Knowledge of the domain you’re writing about (for example, science) is equally important, if not more.

That said, I don’t know of many science-writing jobs. There are far more jobs for technical writers in the software industry than anywhere else.

If I could go through college again and choose my major once more, I would probably still choose English literature with an emphasis in creative writing, but also add a secondary major in graphic design. Reason being, the combination of graphics and text make an excellent combination.

Why not computer science? Well, the software I write about isn’t something that a degree in computer science would have necessarily prepared me for. I don’t have a strong interest in documenting APIs, so the more advanced computer programming knowledge might simply be lost on me.

Another possible route for a major would be to ditch writing altogether. If you already have good writing skills, pour your mind into science classes and write on the side. Become an Isaac Asimov. Knowing John Donne’s poetry and Charles Dickens’ plots won’t necessarily help in a career in technical writing anyway.

Whatever your major, technical writers are lifelong learners. Most professional technical writers fell into the profession from meandering paths. Some were anthropologists, others teachers, or philosophers, physicists, and botanists — you name it. They’ve all managed to develop the skills they needed to excel in the field. So does it really matter what your major is? Not really. Learn to think critically, ask questions, write well, and be patient. Those attributes will do more for your career than any specific major you choose.

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Photo from Flickr by Herkie

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Join the LDSTech Blog Project and Write Articles for Your Portfolio

Tom Johnson — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 07:23:05 +0000

If you’re looking for an opportunity to get some writing experience, consider joining the LDSTech Blog project. LDSTech is a site focusing on IT projects from the LDS Church for volunteer community members. For example, some projects have the goal of building an iPhone app, or making sites more accessible, or coming up with infographics.

I’m heading up a project within this community called LDSTech Blog. On this project, volunteer members help write and edit articles for the LDSTech Blog, pictured below.

If you’re an English major wondering how you’ll get a job after your graduate, or if you’re a creative writer sweating your time in an MFA program thinking about how to transition into the real world (that was me), this is a perfect opportunity.

People are always asking me how to break into technical writing. In fact, just tonight I was responding to someone who explained that they don’t have any experience, that they’re struggling to find an internship or entry-level position.

You know how I transitioned into technical writing? I had a job as a web copywriter for a health and nutrition startup. I wrote all kinds of content for the company, from web articles to press releases to product descriptions. I compiled my best pieces into a portfolio and brought it to my interview for a technical writing job at a financial company.

One of my articles explained how protein worked (because the health and nutrition company sold protein pills to triathletes). One interviewer read the article and was impressed by the clear, articulate way I explained protein. She herself had a PhD in biology, so this topic was something she could evaluate. I beat out a handful of other candidates precisely because I had a strong portfolio, even though almost none of it involved traditional technical writing deliverables.

If you want to transition into technical writing, or any kind of writing career, a strong portfolio will help you get a foot in the door. You need some interesting, well-written articles to influence your interviewers. If you don’t mind writing articles related to technology projects for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), and you can work remotely and use virtual tools to communicate (email, phone, skype, chat, IM, video, ec.), and you have some bandwidth to do some writing and editing this summer, and you want some serious blessings for volunteering, then this opportunity is for you.

As you write and edit articles for the blog, I’ll give you feedback and guidance and explain ways to improve your writing. Any thing you write you can include in your portfolio, and if my experience working with you is a positive one, I will write you a reference letter.

But really, only sign up for the LDSTech Blog project if you’re serious about helping out. If you’re just slightly curious and don’t have any extra cycles to write or edit content, then maybe keep the idea in the back of your mind for a future time when you’re more available.

If you are interested in getting involved, do the following:

Contact the local missionaries through mormon.org and get baptized right away. There are only six lessons and within 2 weeks you can …. Just kidding! You don’t have to be Mormon to work on these projects.
Register for an LDS Account — this gives you a login to Church sites. By the way, you don’t need to be LDS to have an LDS Account. Go to http://ldsaccount.lds.org and click Register for an LDS Account. Walk through the screens and sign up. (Skip the section that asks for your membership record number.
Send me your LDS Account username. I’ll then add you to the project and give you more information.

That’s it. Once you join, I’ll immediately add you to our Google Group and share a Dropbox folder with you. I’ll then ask if you’re interested in writing an article about a specific project. I’ll give you a person to call, you’ll call them, conduct a phone interview to gather information, and then write up a 500 to 800 word article. I’ll review the article and give you feedback. I’ll suggest ways you can shape the article better, and so forth. Maybe it will be perfect already. After we finalize the article, I’ll submit it through the necessary approval processes and then publish it on LDSTech.

Does this sound interesting to you? Want to get involved? Feel free to contact me at tom@idratherbewriting.com with questions. I’d love to work with you.

Note: If you’re a teacher, you could use this as an assignment for students. Even if they only write one article through the project, it could be a much more realistic experience than doing a theoretical exercise from a workbook.

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Will We Still Know Us, Tomorrow?

Tom Johnson — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:04:03 +0000

Michael Hobren

This is a guest post by Michael Hobren. Michael is a technical and “marcom” contract writer, as well as a fictional novelist. He resides with his family in the Tampa, Florida area.

As a technical writer, I don’t think my late father ever quite understood what I do for a living. I would try to explain to him what I did, but to no avail. Despite my best efforts, my explanations were typically met with dad saying, “You know, you should go into television, like Dan Rather or one of those guys.”

I never took my dad’s remark as a slight, however, but rather understood that — for his generation — the world was a much simpler place. He served for more than 20 years as a cop. In his day you were simply a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker: easy-to-understand job descriptions.

Beyond the nuts & bolts of what we technical writers do, the tools we use, and the emerging technologies we gallop to keep pace with, I wonder what we will be called within the next 10 years. As things become more specialized and job requirements evolve and are reclassified, I do not think we will be called Technical Writers for much longer. Simply put, this static handle just will not fit the wave of new development that is already upon us which we, as communications professionals, will be tasked to work with.

Rachel Zupek, writing for CareerBuilder.com, came up with a short list of job titles that did not exist ten years ago: Bloggers, Content Managers, Green Funeral Directors, Interior REdesigners, Patient Advocates, Senior Move Managers, Social Media Specialists, User Experience Analyst, and Virtual Business Service Providers.

According to another article appearing on Monster.com, “labor-market forecasters believe that tomorrow’s new jobs will have unfamiliar titles, such as Visualization Specialists, Social Network Analysts, Parenting Counselors, and Corporate Jesters, who will be paid to tell their leaders important truths that they don’t want to hear.”

One example of a new job title to emerge in the healthcare field in recent years is that of “Informatics Coordinator.” Healthcare ICs – who are typically RNs – work with the resources, devices and methods needed to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information in health and biomedicine. These nurses are nouveau writers who use many of the same tools as technical writers, combined with their background in clinical nursing, to help bring the ever-growing Mt. Everest of healthcare data into some useful focus. The days of nurses sporting white caps and uniforms, taking blood pressures and dispensing medications only, are now a distant memory.

So What Will Tomorrow’s Technical Writers Be Called?

While some of these new, euphemistic terms are already popping up on the job boards – such as Content Managers and Social Media Specialists – we still have a ways to go. So what will technical writers become in the dawning decade? Will this broad job title be phased out to make room for a new, more descriptive title? Two driving forces will foster the need for new job classifications within the next ten years: specialization and education.

A present-day example of this is how the daily news is reported. Today, large media sources, such as the Wall Street Journal, retain staff writers who hold double degrees in Journalism and Business Administration. When a full-time staffer is unavailable, a “contributing editor” is brought in to do the job, e.g., Dr. Richard Besser who regularly reports for ABC News on health-related matters, and former NSA counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke on matters of national security, just to name two.

The technical writers of tomorrow will need to have backgrounds other than writing and a general Liberal Arts education in order to be knowledgeable and effective. An English or Journalism degree, combined with ancillary training as a Medical Technician, will be a good inroad to writing for the healthcare field. A cross-section of technical writing and Data Processing training will better enable technical writers to interact and contribute within the computer world.

Enter the ‘ZebraComms’

Of course there is a down side to becoming multi-discipline Zebra Communicators who bear too many stripes. Tomorrow’s technical writers may find their skill sets too narrowly focused, and consequently jobs that perfectly fit their profiles may be hard to find. Still, the trend toward specialization, and the education needed to stay abreast of new developments, is not going to reverse itself. As former Disney CEO Michael Eisner said, “When you’re trying to create things that are new, you have to be prepared to be on the edge of risk.”

If we continue to remain communications generalists, relying on product SMEs and others to “tell us” what needs to be communicated to a well-informed consumer base, then we relegate ourselves to being glorified stenographers with no real understanding of what we are writing about. As we move forward toward the 2020 mark, becoming ZebraComms will be the only way that we will be able to stay in the game, and to become valued strategic stakeholders in what we produce for our clients and employers. Of one thing we can be sure of, even now: time (and technology) waits for no one.

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My Comments on “Best Careers 2011: Technical Writer – US News and World Report”

Tom Johnson — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:51:42 +0000

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Best Careers 2011: Technical Writer – US News and World Report.

It doesn’t amaze me that technical writer is listed in the top 50 careers. Technical writer appeared as a top 50 career in 2006 and 2009 in CNN Money. Each year there’s a lot of controversy about the description, but this year, some things are especially intriguing.

US News and World Report says as a technical writer, “you’d work with computers and electronic publishing software, including graphic design, page layout, and multimedia software.” The writer then says,

Future employment for technical writers looks bright, especially for those with strong Web and multimedia skills, according to estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Compare the emphasis on web, graphic design, and multimedia skills with trends about structured authoring, XML/DITA, content re-use, and single sourcing, which aren’t mentioned. Why the discrepancy? Internal to the tech comm field, you might think the main trends are the latter. External, it’s the former.

There’s also no mention of wikis, community, content curation, or user-generated content, even though “Curator” (as in museum curator) is one of the other top jobs in the “Creative and Service” grouping.

Let’s stop and examine that “Creative and Service” grouping for a minute. The article says,

Our picks in the creative and service category this year:

• Commercial pilot

• Curator

• Film and video editor

• Gaming manager

• Heating, air conditioning, and refrigeration technician

• Interpreter/Translator

• Multimedia artist

• Technical writer

If there were ever a what-the-heck moment, here it is. Why are creative and service jobs lumped together? Ask someone what a pilot, curator, heating/AC technician, translator, and technical writer have in common, and I guarantee that you’ll stump the person.

Here’s another interesting idea. The article about the grouping begins,

Not everyone wants to work behind a desk. Lucky, then, that some of the best opportunities don’t require you to sit in the office all day.

Funny, I find that this statement defines the opposite of my job. The less I move, the more productive I am.

Another interesting section of the article addresses the stress factor. In a previous CNN best careers article, technical writing was named one of the top 5 least stressful jobs in the US. Now we read,

Stress level: Moderate to high. Expect to work early mornings, late nights, and weekends to meet deadlines or coordinate with clients in different time zones. These deadline pressures and work hours can often lead to stress, fatigue, and even burnout. Extended time spent in front of computers can lead to eyestrain and back pain.

How do we jump from one of the least stressful jobs to “moderator to high stress”?

My favorite part of the article appears near the end:

Real advice from real people about landing a job as a technical writer:

Until now, reader, you’ve been reading fake advice from fake people. In this section, you get to hear some real content.

Despite the shortcomings of the article, I like the attention on web, multimedia, and graphics. This reinforces my specialization in web (WordPress and Mediawiki), screencasts, and visual graphics. It’s not that structured authoring isn’t important, but in the eyes of the user, maybe not so much.

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Technical Writing Is More Than “Click This, Select That” [Podcast]

Tom Johnson — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:18:14 +0000

Download MP3
Length: 50 min.

This is a presentation I gave at BYU Idaho last week to students interested in entering professional writing. For the accompanying slides, see this post. For the overall question I was trying to tackle, see Students Contemplate Whether a Technical Writing Career Will Be Fulfilling.

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Why Tech Comm Is a Career Path of Last Resort for Students

Tom Johnson — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:32:28 +0000

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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Technical Communication Careers: Getting Started and Finding Your Niche (BYU Idaho Presentation)

Tom Johnson — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:40:53 +0000

Tomorrow I’m driving up to BYU Idaho to give a presentation titled “Technical Communication Careers: Getting Started and Finding Your Niche.” It’s part of their annual Pre-Professional Writing Conference for English and professional writing students. I like to go because I have an old colleague up there who teaches English (we spent 2 years in Egypt teaching at The American University in Cairo), and it’s always fun to visit with him.

Below are the “slides” for my presentation. I’m using WordPress rather than PowerPoint. You can actually click through the images just like you can with PowerPoint (once you are viewing the image details, click the image itself to move to the next one in the gallery). If you have any feedback about anything, let me know. I created these illustrations in Adobe Illustrator. I was actually going to insert them into PowerPoint, but I realized that when you view the PowerPoint show, it resizes the images and makes them a little blurry. Plus I’m weary of PowerPoint anyway and wanted to try something new.

Note: Several people have asked if they can use some of these images for their own slide presentations. Sure, feel free to do that. You can link back to my site with attribution if you want, but it’s not required.

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Substandard Wages for Technical Writers: A Growing Trend?

Tom Johnson — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:00:34 +0000

Substandard wages for senior technical writers

This week’s question comes from Mary in New York:

I am a loyal reader of your blog and have gained more from it than all the seminars and continuing ed courses I’ve taken–which cost me a good chunk of my salary.

Recently, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend which I hope you might consider blogging about. I’m an experienced technical writer currently looking for work, and I’ve been contacted by several recruiters. However, the hourly rate the recruiters want to pay me is far below my expectations for senior technical writing positions.

These recruiters want to pay $28/hr for senior technical writing positions. Many of these positions require advanced knowledge of content management systems, experience with many complex technologies such as XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, and more. I invested close to $10,000 over the past 2 years learning DITA and other XML vocabularies. In my life I have invested close to quarter of a million dollars (counting college, graduate school, conferences, and adult education) to get the necessary knowledge and training for these positions.

The salaries I’m being offered are on par with what I pay non-English speaking cleaning persons (I pay 2 sisters, each $25/hr for several hours of work each week). Clearly the recruiter is taking more than half for him or herself. (BTW: When I say recruiter, I also mean companies that represent the “contractor.” These companies hire the “Contractor,” offer no benefits and pay a sub-standard wage, while they collect twice that from the company.)

A recruiter called me today and offered me the sub-standard wage of $22.00/hr for a job that listed the above requirements AND was located in New York City! Six months ago, the wage that recruiters seemed to agree on was $35/hr. Now it is mid-twenties. Why is this happening?

Is it happening because there are writers out there who agree to those wages? Aren’t they doing the rest of us a disservice by doing so? The more recruiters are able to get writers willing to work for such wages, the greedier they get and the lower the salaries go … sometimes by 2 dollars here and 2 dollars there, but in five months it adds up. $35/hr becomes $25/hr … and now this is the first recruiter who has called me with the insulting offer of $22/hr.

I love my work as a technical writer, but I am beginning to see that I would be better off working as a cleaning person. I wouldn’t need to update my skills every 4 months, and I would get paid around the same.

My overall question is this: Do writers who work for sub-standard wages hurt the tech comm industry? If so, what can we do about it? Thanks for any insights you can provide.

I opened this question up to the professional technical writing community for responses. Some responded in a Google doc and others responded in the comments below this post.

In general, the trend among the answers is that writing is becoming a commodity that can be offshored or outsourced for low wages. Technical writers need to expand their skillsets to go beyond writing to add more value to their company. They need to be problem solvers, analytical thinkers, contributing more than just words, but also contributing to social media, user interfaces, content strategy, business analysis, elearning, information architecture, project planning, and more.

Kristi Leach points out that writing alone isn’t valued because so many feel that “no one reads the manual anyway.” As technical communicators go beyond writing and provide more value to the company, their jobs will become more secure and their salaries higher.

Other responses mentioned more contributing factors to the trend of sub-standard wages — the down economy, the principle of supply and demand, the acceptance of ”good enough” standards.

The trend is cyclical. Sub-standard wages attract inexperienced or desperate technical writers. The deliverables they produce may reflect their inexperience or may be the product of bad working conditions that don’t allow for high quality information products. The result is a general perception that manuals, online help, and other technical writing deliverables aren’t worth much. As a result, employers continue to offer low wages for the work, even to experienced technical writers. Low wages will in turn drive experienced technical writers into other fields, such as interaction design or usability. Those who are left (the outsourced, offshored, inexperienced group of technical writers) continue to reinforce the employers’ misperceptions, and soon it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy moving the field as a whole downward.

This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it explains the growing discontent with the title “technical writer” and the reason more professionals move to other titles such as technical communicator, information developer, information designer, content strategist, and others.

Here are the responses. Thanks to everyone who participated.

_______________________________

There was a similar thing going on in 2002 when I was last going through contracting firms and recruiters. I got quoted salaries of $12.50/hr in this area, which I thought was tremendously insulting (and unlivable). The reality is that there are a number of things that are probably contributing to the situation today: the economy, a glut of displaced technical writers (as writing positions are moved to China and India), and businesses trying to keep their costs down and still provide U.S. workers an opportunity. Those employers tend to offer less to the contracting firms and the firms offer less to the candidates so they can keep their margin. By farming the search out to contracting firms, the businesses get the side benefit of not having to deal with the HR issues (and a smaller HR staff) thereby keeping costs down even more.

Unless the company with the requirement actually wants to take the cost of filling the temporary position, I doubt you’ll see much change. The hiring company may be offering what they think is a reasonable salary, but the contracting company has to take their margin from that offer, thus resulting in what you’re seeing. (Remember, this is all my opinion and I don’t represent any contracting firm by my statements.)

Julio J. Vazquez
_______________________________

I’m afraid that technical writing, as distinct from other forms of technical communication, is fast becoming a commodity. Companies can find writers who are willing to work for low wages and produce work that’s “good enough.” Increasingly, as Julio mentioned, these writers are offshore.

To continue earning a living wage, today’s technical writers need to diversify their skills. We have to market themselves as specialized editors, information architects, content strategists, and the like.

Over the long term, I hope that the people in our profession can educate employers about the bottom-line value of good technical writing. Too many companies settle for “good enough” because no one has shown them that excellent technical writing produces measurable benefits in customer satisfaction, liability avoidance, and so forth. We have a long way to go in this area, but it’s a big point of emphasis for STC.

Larry Kunz
_______________________________

Yes, in recent years we have seen this trend developing. With the advent of collaboration platforms such as oDesk and the like, we are seeing the rate paid to technical writers becoming lower and lower not only on the per-hour basis, but also as a trend towards forcing riders to perform on flimsy per-contract bases also. I am hoping in time to see that we cannot put up with this any further, and that some kind of realistic balance may be later achieved.

[By the way, I wrote this in about 10 seconds with some voice recognition software.]

John Melendez
_______________________________

Sadly, I think this is a result of the bad economy. My husband, an aircraft mechanic responsible for keeping huge jets carrying hundreds of passengers in the air, has been forced into so many concessions, he grumbles that garbage men earn more for tossing Hefty bags into the back of a truck.

(Brief aside to sanitation workers who find my comment insulting: When you compare the knowledge and experience required to haul trash versus maintain the complex systems of a commercial jetliner, is it not reasonable to expect a higher salary for the latter? Failure at only one of these jobs can result in death.)

For many unemployed professionals, a job at any salary is better than no job, so I think the supply/demand principle is a big part of this trend. But I also believe another mitigating factor is the continued insistence that anybody can write. I face it every day. Because of that belief, employers are expecting basic writing ability in all job candidates and are getting it. That perpetuates the myth that anyone can do our jobs. I work with a writer who, after a year of unemployment, accepted a ridiculously low salary that he is now stuck with, and yet after a year of unemployment, I am sure I’d have done the same.

We need to campaign more effectively for the bigger picture, as Mary describes it… DITA, XML, the task analyses we perform, the ability to make the complex not only simple to understand but easy to apply. We design a variety of help systems, and influence interface design decisions. Many call us ‘generalists’, but I believe we are specialists in many related areas and THAT’S what commands higher pay.

Patty Blount
_______________________________

All of this speaks to a simple truth for myself: it’s why I no longer consider myself a technical writer. Here in North Carolina tech writing has taken a real backseat to disciplines like UX and IXD. The demand and the pay for these other disciplines is better, and what you do is more obviously impacting the bottom line. Yes, it requires retraining and retooling (although tech writing formed part of a natural foundation, and the skills remain useful) but it pays to follow the money trail.

I would also add that “Campaigning” for the importance of tech writing is a position of pure weakness (given it is an established profession, not nascent). If that’s what tech writers in general are faced with — and apparently it is given that I first heard people talking about it almost a decade ago — I recommend doing something else. I did, am and thankful for it.

Gary Franceschini
_______________________________

Here in the Silicon Valley, the same problem is happening. What really bothers me is the “cut” that most contract agencies extract for putting together employer and contractor. I call them Pimps, because they provide a service, but they command a much larger percentage of the “take” than their efforts warrant. After being laid off from Cisco in 2003, I worked as a contractor for a year or so, hoping to be hired back. There were only three contract agencies that had been approved to do business with Cisco, so if you wanted to play, you had to pay. They regularly billed Cisco for $100 an hour and kept half! One agency I worked with also made you work for a month, then billed them, and then, only after they got paid (usually 6-8 weeks after start date), they would pay you.

They also regularly ignored the California state laws about what constitutes a contract worker and what constitutes a temp worker. The agency that had been audited (and caught) paid the fines and followed the rules to “hire” us as temp workers, but they paid us even less (“more overhead,” they said) and we were not allowed to work overtime, so if we needed to work extra hours, it was “off the books.” Cisco eventually lost a class-action lawsuit regarding tech writers, so now I believe they are considered hourly workers, which is a drop in status.

Where I now work is a smaller company. When I started contracting for them as an individual, they asked me to join MBO Partners (http://www.mbopartners.com/), a GREAT website for consultants and contractors, and in exchange for providing billing services and timecard, insurance, a web presence, and other things, they billed an extra $3 an hour to my invoices. Employer loved not having to overpay, I loved getting my full $60 an hour, and they got a fair amount. I urge all of you to check out MBO Services and try to work through them. It is free to sign up. Eventually I was hired by the last company, and I am one of the lucky ones to have full pay and benefits. Good luck to you all.

Sandy P.
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I am in my second tech writing gig and have only seen my pay increase, although I also moved to an area with a higher standard of living and increased cost to commute. I also lost any guaranteed benefits and have reduced time off. But I am happy with the pay increase (almost as happy as being able to voluntarily leave one job and quickly get another in a different state with a larger company), and I like the flexibility of choosing my own benefits.
_______________________________

This is a classic supply and demand problem. Lots of unemployed writers = lower wage offers. Also, I wouldn’t be so quick to blame the recruiters. I would assume that the employers are also exerting downward pressure on the rates they’re willing to pay. That is, the employer who used to pay $50/hour now wants to pay $40/hour.

The solution to this problem is to have a compelling set of skills that employers are willing to pay a premium for.

Blaming the unemployed writers is a bit harsh. $22/hour is a lot more than you might get from unemployment insurance (assuming it hasn’t run out) and it’s probably enough for shelter and food. If you’re close to losing your house, you don’t have the luxury of turning up your nose at low-ball offers.

Finally, “sub-standard” is in the eye of the beholder. I think we’re in the midst of a painful reset of salary expectation for technical writers. There are a variety of factors at work here, including high unemployment, competition from lower-cost locales, and low expectations for the work product. (That is, you may produce much better content than the $22/hour writer, but if the employer thinks that the less expensive person produces work that’s “good enough,” then your increased quality is irrelevant.)

Sarah O’Keefe, scriptorium.com
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I agree with Sarah’s comments. A lot of it is to do with the value the employers perceive they are getting. If they don’t see the value, then they won’t pay. In the past, companies were paying for domain knowledge or specialist technical skills (in Windows Help, for example) in addition to writing skills. A lot of technical writing these days is in Word and in HTML, which are not as mysterious as say HDK or FrameMaker. So the profession has to demonstrate value, accept it offers less value than it thought it did, and/or become mysterious again.

People are motivated greatly by a fear of loss. So if someone offers you a job at a low rate, there’s a fear of losing that opportunity and that another one won’t come along. However, that fear of loss works both ways. If you can demonstrate you can offer something to an organisation (at your price), then they may be motivated by a fear of losing that value. That may mean not waiting for offers from a recruitment agency, but GOYA (getting off your …) to network and prospect. Harder done than said, I know. Of course, they will be motivated by having a problem or pain they want to solve, and that there’s hope that it can be solved.

There is some hope for the future. Finally, with Web-based content, we can measure how many readers we have, if they found it useful, if there is a correlation between how much User Assistance there is and how many Support calls, and so on.

Ellis Pratt, cherryleaf.com
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The cheese was moved some time ago.

I’d be happy to talk with anyone who is interested in figuring out their future (nope, I am not a coach, professional therapist, or other such thing). I have reinvented myself a number of times. Most recently, I started a small company based upon my interest in family history and genealogy.

I believe the future of technical communication is in the blogosphere and other social media outlets. Employers don’t see us as having the skills for that and know that they can hire people coming out of college for $12.00 an hour to blog like crazy, whether the content is good, bad, or indifferent. If anyone would like to work on this as a business model for tech pubs, let me know, because there is a great white paper in the topic.

We, technical communicators, can’t possibly control what employers will and won’t do, but we can control what we do. I believe that we have lots of great skills and talents to offer, but it will have to be in other fields doing other types of communication work. Making the choice to move on is the hard part.

Jon Baker
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I wanted to make just one comment. I do not believe, honestly, that training in XML and DITA costs around $10,000. I first heard about DITA in 2004. By the end of 2006, I was leading a documentation conversion project for my company, and by the end of 2008, that project has been completed. Between 2004 and 2006, I went to a few conferences, and learned by reading basic technical books and information available online. The basic XML class that I took sometime around the year 2000 had cost me about $200. Each of the conferences, even if I were to pay myself (they were paid by the company) had a price tag of about $1000 including all expenses and travel. The books were for $20 or so each. All other information is free and available online. Nowadays, there is even no need to go to these conferences to learn the same technology as it is widely spread and available for free or nearly for free, through seminars and books.

Julia M.
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This is not surprising in the world of commodity writing. However, it’s hardly a trend. I’m interviewing people this morning for several clients who have several tech comm jobs available that pay extremely well, above the annual reported salaries from the STC salary survey. That said, “writing” is not the focus of the jobs, “communication” is, which involves strategy, information architecture, project planning, usability, accessibility, and more. Writing is not a skill that is going to continue to pay high wages. If that is your differentiator, you’re in big trouble.

Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler
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Another source of this problem is that anybody can set themselves up as a contract recruiter or agency. When I first started job hunting in Atlanta in 1990, when the job market divebombed after the invasion in Kuwait, there were a limited number of contract agencies in the area. In the next 3 years until hiring rebounded in about 1993, I got to know at least one recruiter at most of the agencies that even occasionally hired technical writers and editors. Since then, most of the local agencies have become part of national organizations, but they and some of the newer local agencies operate in a professional manner. However, in the last few years, the number of new recruiters (mostly single-person operations) that have popped up, who call and badger me to work for them for around $22/hour have become a major aggravation.

As someone else mentioned, most major employers used to work with a few selected, vetted recruiting firms or contract agencies to obtain contract employees. Government agencies, however have to post their openings publicly, and any agency can submit candidates. I have been most often annoyed by these fly-by-night fast-talking individuals when there were open posted positions at the CDC or the GA DOT or DOL. Many speak English with a horrible accent and talk too fast for me to understand them on the phone.

Recruiters at nation-wide professional contract agencies have told me that the typical agency markup over the contract hourly rate is 20-35%, and they wish to maintain good relationships with both their clients and contract employees. Those who are trying to grab 50-75% and offer the writers insulting rates are in it for the money, and because they think they can get away with it.

Techquestioner
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I don’t think it’s a position of weakness to know how to articulate the value of your position. We could compare that to the development team or the accounting team, for example, and argue that they don’t seem to need to justify their existence. But don’t they? I see people in many fields who have invested in themselves and bring superior skills to the company having to compete with those who have less skill (and lower wages) or with offshoring.

I do agree that it’s a bit different for tech comm folk, though, mainly for the reasons that Scott Abel mentioned–the hot deliverables like communication strategies and more integrated user assistance are more valued than the help systems and manuals that “no one reads, anyway.” If we can’t connect the dots for management to show that we are the ones that can handle that shift for them, we can get left behind.

I do think that if you are in a market where writers are frantically taking what they can get, it will drag your wages down, and you’ll have to work harder to find the sweet jobs. Can you find new recruiters? Can you find clients directly?

Further, can you help other writers develop better negotiating skills and better prospecting skills? If you’re active in your local STC chapter (or another group), maybe you can organize a panel discussion or present on what works for you. You’ll be investing in the quality of your job market, and accomplishing some networking at the same time.

Kristi Leach
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Although current economics have something to do with what you’re seeing, I believe that there will always be a wide range of salaries for the simple fact that if a company searches long enough, they will always find someone who will accept their low paying positions. I once was offered a position with a company for $20,000 LESS than what I wanted. Their HR person even told me that my salary expectation was out of line for the position and that they “hoped I would consider” the amount they were offering because they felt I was, otherwise, a perfect fit for them. (Note: This was during regular economic times.) I declined to accept that horrendous offer knowing full well that the entire company must undervalue technical communicators, otherwise, how could HR say such a thing. Not more than a few weeks later, I found a position that paid exactly what I wanted without even a quibble. Of course, the low-paying position was also filled. As an active STC member, I meet technical communicator all the time; every now and then, I meet the unfortunate people that are employed by that low-paying company. They talk of the stressful work environment, long hours, and lack of respect. Sometimes, even the best of us are subjected to those working conditions, but the difference is that we are better compensated for it. By settling for lower wages, they become part of the problem. They reinforce the company’s lacklustre wages. Instead, we should always stay knowledgeable about current salaries, and if we have access to local salary information, we should go into the interview ready to use it.

(A Calgarian that knows her worth!)
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Fortunately, given how available social media tools are now, you don’t have to depend entirely on recruiters. You have more control over your job search options due to social media like TweetMyJob or the search engine in Twitter. If the job is listed on TweetMyJobs or Twitter, my experience has been that it was usually posted in the last hour or day and provides a link to more information. Given your comments, you might want to use those search engines more and recruiters less.

I agree with those who say that you have to have something extra to get a higher rate.
For example, I am currently helping a large proposal team to respond to a very complex proposal. The rate is far higher than anything I made for technical writing. I found the job on Twitter, went through a recruiter, and held out for a higher rate than they said they could offer…and then did offer the higher rate after I refused the lower rate.

And Tom…great technique surveying other tech writers for their experience as well.

Bruce Curley, poetslife.blogspot.com, poetslife@gmail.com

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Answers About the Field of Technical Writing for Students

Tom Johnson — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:15:51 +0000

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Length: 27 min.

In this monologue podcast, I answer a student’s questions about the field of technical writing, including how I fell into it, what kinds of projects I work on, and other details. Her questions are as follows:

What did you study in college and where did you attend?
What degrees/certificates do you have?
Did you know what you wanted to do before you graduated? If so, what was it? Is it what you’re doing now? If not, why did it change and are you glad it did?
What is your current job title and description?
How did you come across your current job?
What did you go through to get this job? Applying, interview, training, etc…
How long have you held this position?
What activities, responsibilities, duties, knowledge, etc. does your position require?
What have you done to maintain your success in this field/position?
Have your position and/or responsibilities changed over your time with this company?
What past jobs have you had? Were they helpful when starting your current job?
Did you study technical writing in school or was this learned/gained through the employment that you sought and obtained?
What tools (including computer software) do you most frequently use? And what tools do you most highly recommend to other technical writers?
When you were younger, what was your dream job? What’s your dream job now (if it’s not your current job) and do you plan on trying to pursue it anytime in the future? How will you do that if you plan on it?
Had you heard of technical writing before your jobs that were in the field? If so, what did you think of it and when you got involved with it in your past/current employment how was it different/similar from your previous expectations?
Can you ever see yourself working in a position that doesn’t require writing or some form of technical communication? Why/why not?
How would you describe your personal writing style? Do you think that at work this style is stifled because of the nature of your work or restraints/company policy?
Why did you start your blog? Where do you get the ideas for your posts and topics from?
Have you ever considered quitting your current job to work solely on your blog? Why/why not?
Is there anything that you’ve ever had the urge to write about to include on your blog but you haven’t actually done it? Why/why not?
What advice, if any, do you have for me, a soon to be college graduate wishing to enter the field in the next year or two?

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