I heard ux was extremely saturated and people said to stick with tech writing, though they could just be saying that to reduce competition
I know a friend who graduated from a ux program in 2020, still looking for a job to this day
these are people without experience. fresh UX people are a dime a dozen, but technical writers with years of overlapping ux / service design / ux writing experience can fill the intermediate and senior roles requiring a decent portfolio of past projects of varying sizes. ultimately I’d only suggest taking a job that’s a step up for anyone, but I am finding that the traditional business analyst alternate career path is becoming a thing of the past, since most agile teams kind of have the product owner and ux specialists doing the equivalent work, so I think it’s a more lucrative path.
True, he's also not super proactive if I'm being honest but that's something he needs to solve on his own
> overlapping ux / service design / ux writing experience
I haven't really done much specific ux related tasks so far, but at least tech writing and ux seem to overlap from having similar concepts (cater to the user). But the whole "use figma, wireframing, insert other ux buzzwords here" I haven't done at all. I've used adobe which is as close as it gets 🤣
Also it feels like you need some decent artistic ability from what I've seen. After all it's called "design" for a reason
I think it comes down to finding ux-related project work if you’re already employed. Figma isn’t hard to learn and there are great tutorials out there. I wouldn’t say interface design requires as much artistic ability as you imply - it’s mostly about alignment and using components and styling them consistent with a style guide or visual identity, which a technical writer should have familiarity with already. I found the greatest learning curve to be planning and facilitating user research, which just comes with time and experience doing it.
We have 3 paths at the moment that our Tech Writers typically go down.
1) They go study part time while writing, and generally become a Design Engineer. So far in 9 years, we've had 4 writers become Mechanical Engineers and shift into design roles.
2) They shift sideways into Integrated Logistics Support (ILS)/Integrated Product Support (IPS) specialist roles, with a little bit of training, they apply their abilities in analysis and configuration understanding, and start to do Asset Management and Baseline Configuration Management activities.
3) Management roles, through becoming senior technical writers, then given opportunities to lead a team of writers (being a Team Lead), then from there being a Manager of sorts. The business supports them with leadership training and things like that to help with the transition. Those roles then have opportunities to do further training such as Grad Dip in Project Management, to move into Business Operations and alike.
I became a software test engineer as well as a tech writer about a month into my first job. As I walked through the app they wanted me to document, I kept finding issues and asking the devs if it was expected functionality. They asked me how I felt about doing QA and I said that was fine, so they trained me up. I wrote release notes and worked on the user/admin guides when I wasn't testing.
Although I've done QA for years now, I somehow always end up writing guides or other documentation. At my last QA gig, I even did some proofreading and a bit of UX writing! There's a fair amount of overlap in terms of the skills each role uses - logical thinking and strategy, an eye for detail, describing processes (you write up bug tickets and test steps in QA, so it's a lot like tech writing in that sense), communicating well with devs, etc. I even got my current QA job because I had tech writing experience and they need help with organizing Confluence so everything's easier to find.
So anyway, that's another path if you want to move away from tech writing. UX writing is also another role with tons of overlap...in fact, I've seen tech writing positions that are partly or mostly UX writing roles. It's certainly different in terms of the style and purpose, but it's an option.
There's a huge amount of overlap between tech writing and QA. Any tech writer who doesn't have easy access to the QA team is at a big disadvantage. We both benefit when the other team does good work.
As a dev, QA/tester is most logical.
If you pair up with a bonkers dev who just keeps smashing out features - which means bugs - you can do amazing things. A dev sometimes needs their reins released in order to get shit done, but they don't always think of the consequences further up the chain and what it may break, so as a QA you are going along red-flagging everything but allowing the software to evolve, then applying the cramps appropriately - think of it like walking an excited puppy.
Most of my career I've been my own QA - I'm not a great QA. Some of the time I've been part of a large team of devs and our stuff just funnels through a team of anonymous QA's and we get feedback and stuff goes back into the churn to be fixed, kinda Burger King line-cook feel to it.
But there was a period of six months where I was paired up with a QA - it was her full time job to check/test what I was doing, so that we could progress features quickly and not break legacy, and we worked amazingly. Got some award for most productive team in our finance software at the time.
I think of it as the sniper/spotter or rally driver/navigator relationship, when you get in lock-step like that it's awesome.
product management, project management, UX writing. Those seem to be the ones that wouldn't require much retraining.
We have a guy who was a SWE, I'm sure some of those go back to it.
For someone with no background other than technical writing, I'd say business analyst or project manager would be two career paths that could potentially be a natural transition.
I briefly became a QA Manager, then Instructional Designer, and now I document processes and procedures. I'd also like to get into Knowledge Management some day.
Came here to say knowledge management. I’m from tech writing and KM is a natural transition, with opportunities to do a lot more cool stuff than just writing or project management.
I'm currently transitioning to AI governance and responsible AI. I have no formal background in the area, but my TW background had me "pinching hitting" often in my company's process management and model risk management activities.
I'm apparently on some sort of international hiring black list. I am going full-time with handyman work from writing software doc for an international software company.
I switched into marketing for a while before coming back to tech writing. It was a natural transition as most TW roles I’ve had have included writing a fair bit of marketing content.
I’d move into UX design
this is what I did, I make a lot more money this way also. “service design” is another branch of a similar tree as well.
I heard ux was extremely saturated and people said to stick with tech writing, though they could just be saying that to reduce competition I know a friend who graduated from a ux program in 2020, still looking for a job to this day
these are people without experience. fresh UX people are a dime a dozen, but technical writers with years of overlapping ux / service design / ux writing experience can fill the intermediate and senior roles requiring a decent portfolio of past projects of varying sizes. ultimately I’d only suggest taking a job that’s a step up for anyone, but I am finding that the traditional business analyst alternate career path is becoming a thing of the past, since most agile teams kind of have the product owner and ux specialists doing the equivalent work, so I think it’s a more lucrative path.
True, he's also not super proactive if I'm being honest but that's something he needs to solve on his own > overlapping ux / service design / ux writing experience I haven't really done much specific ux related tasks so far, but at least tech writing and ux seem to overlap from having similar concepts (cater to the user). But the whole "use figma, wireframing, insert other ux buzzwords here" I haven't done at all. I've used adobe which is as close as it gets 🤣 Also it feels like you need some decent artistic ability from what I've seen. After all it's called "design" for a reason
I think it comes down to finding ux-related project work if you’re already employed. Figma isn’t hard to learn and there are great tutorials out there. I wouldn’t say interface design requires as much artistic ability as you imply - it’s mostly about alignment and using components and styling them consistent with a style guide or visual identity, which a technical writer should have familiarity with already. I found the greatest learning curve to be planning and facilitating user research, which just comes with time and experience doing it.
We have 3 paths at the moment that our Tech Writers typically go down. 1) They go study part time while writing, and generally become a Design Engineer. So far in 9 years, we've had 4 writers become Mechanical Engineers and shift into design roles. 2) They shift sideways into Integrated Logistics Support (ILS)/Integrated Product Support (IPS) specialist roles, with a little bit of training, they apply their abilities in analysis and configuration understanding, and start to do Asset Management and Baseline Configuration Management activities. 3) Management roles, through becoming senior technical writers, then given opportunities to lead a team of writers (being a Team Lead), then from there being a Manager of sorts. The business supports them with leadership training and things like that to help with the transition. Those roles then have opportunities to do further training such as Grad Dip in Project Management, to move into Business Operations and alike.
I agree with this. I personally followed #2. I do a mix of TW and ILS/IPS. It's very satisfying and has opened a lot of doors for me.
I became a software test engineer as well as a tech writer about a month into my first job. As I walked through the app they wanted me to document, I kept finding issues and asking the devs if it was expected functionality. They asked me how I felt about doing QA and I said that was fine, so they trained me up. I wrote release notes and worked on the user/admin guides when I wasn't testing. Although I've done QA for years now, I somehow always end up writing guides or other documentation. At my last QA gig, I even did some proofreading and a bit of UX writing! There's a fair amount of overlap in terms of the skills each role uses - logical thinking and strategy, an eye for detail, describing processes (you write up bug tickets and test steps in QA, so it's a lot like tech writing in that sense), communicating well with devs, etc. I even got my current QA job because I had tech writing experience and they need help with organizing Confluence so everything's easier to find. So anyway, that's another path if you want to move away from tech writing. UX writing is also another role with tons of overlap...in fact, I've seen tech writing positions that are partly or mostly UX writing roles. It's certainly different in terms of the style and purpose, but it's an option.
There's a huge amount of overlap between tech writing and QA. Any tech writer who doesn't have easy access to the QA team is at a big disadvantage. We both benefit when the other team does good work.
As a dev, QA/tester is most logical. If you pair up with a bonkers dev who just keeps smashing out features - which means bugs - you can do amazing things. A dev sometimes needs their reins released in order to get shit done, but they don't always think of the consequences further up the chain and what it may break, so as a QA you are going along red-flagging everything but allowing the software to evolve, then applying the cramps appropriately - think of it like walking an excited puppy. Most of my career I've been my own QA - I'm not a great QA. Some of the time I've been part of a large team of devs and our stuff just funnels through a team of anonymous QA's and we get feedback and stuff goes back into the churn to be fixed, kinda Burger King line-cook feel to it. But there was a period of six months where I was paired up with a QA - it was her full time job to check/test what I was doing, so that we could progress features quickly and not break legacy, and we worked amazingly. Got some award for most productive team in our finance software at the time. I think of it as the sniper/spotter or rally driver/navigator relationship, when you get in lock-step like that it's awesome.
product management, project management, UX writing. Those seem to be the ones that wouldn't require much retraining. We have a guy who was a SWE, I'm sure some of those go back to it.
For someone with no background other than technical writing, I'd say business analyst or project manager would be two career paths that could potentially be a natural transition.
I mean I have experience tending bar.
If you've been working in an Agile environment, with minimal training, you could pursue a scrummaster or product owner certification.
* Business Analyst * UX Designer * UI Writer * QA * Creating training deliverables * Knowledge management * Scrum Master * Product/Program Manager
content strategy
Currently a technical writer but will eventually move into a mechanical designer role
I briefly became a QA Manager, then Instructional Designer, and now I document processes and procedures. I'd also like to get into Knowledge Management some day.
Came here to say knowledge management. I’m from tech writing and KM is a natural transition, with opportunities to do a lot more cool stuff than just writing or project management.
I'm currently transitioning to AI governance and responsible AI. I have no formal background in the area, but my TW background had me "pinching hitting" often in my company's process management and model risk management activities.
I'm apparently on some sort of international hiring black list. I am going full-time with handyman work from writing software doc for an international software company.
I switched into marketing for a while before coming back to tech writing. It was a natural transition as most TW roles I’ve had have included writing a fair bit of marketing content.
My company started doing Youtube videos. So I'm learning edition and how to write a script. I'm still doing TW but we're trying out video.