Technical writing jobs

A girl I work with, her boyfirend does technical writting and now she is looking at getting out of journalism and into technical writting.

Wendell Gee said it best, actually almost word-for-word the way she described it, that they don't expect people walking in off the street to know the product they are writing about, and that you'll be trained on it.

The only thing I can add to this thread is, if she does get into the tech writing industry, both of them would be writing from home, meaning they can basically be living anywhere. They will be moving to a ski town if it does happen. Not sure if all tech jobs are home based, may be something to look into if it gives you the option to live somewhere where you can better enjoy your life as well.

The more I think about it, the better a career move it sounds like.

 

A lot of technical writing jobs require you know the subject, but not all.

I write a lot for an insurance company now and it is essentially technical writing sometimes, but it's easy to pick up the material when you are immersed in it.

 

Don't bother with the degree.

If I showed you what I was doing tonight, your eyes would glaze over and you'd think all your dreams of an exciting life are ruined. Then I'd show you my paycheck.

Key thing to remember is how frightened these very smart people are of writing. In a computer environment, in addition to all the immigrants, you have people who went through school on the math track. Most of them would qualify as brilliant. But they don't know the difference between that and which, and they can't tell what's a sentence and what's a fragment. That's your marketable skill. Not the picture you paint with your prose, but your ability to spell and to match subject and verb. It's rare these days.

If you're looking at Craigslist and such, you might want to concentrate on the one-offs or the ones that just need somebody 10-15 hours. You can string together a couple of those gigs, or if you do well on the first one or two assignments, that company will just turn to you every team because they know you won't be a headache.

As for professional qualifications, make sure you're operational with the whole Microsoft Office suite. Maybe not PowerPoint necessarily, but Word (with all of its functionality, not just typing up a letter) and Excel.

 

Certificate? Yeah, I wouldn't bother.

If you've got a BA in journalism or English you're already qualified, degree-wise, for most of those jobs.

 

Do they really pay that much? And is it really that boring?

Suddenly I'm intrigued about a field I'd never considered.

 

My supervisor on this job told me at the start, "It's not as boring as it sounds." That's about right. It's tough getting started because sometimes it feels like you're reading a foreign language with all the jargon, but you can push through it.

Pay is a big range, maybe anywhere from $40-80 an hour??? (Others could narrow it maybe; I haven't had the widest range of experience with different companies.)

 

It's an office job (even if you aren't working in an office, that's what it amounts to). I wouldn't say it's any more or less boring than any other office job. You get to write but it probably won't be about something terribly thrilling (though, c'mon. For every story I wrote in my newspaper days that really fired me up, I wrote three - being generous - that were mind-numbing. I was not spending nights in combat zones or covering the Olympics, so it ain't the thrills-to 'Office Space' trade some back it out to be).

I don't have a solid view of what the industry as a whole pays. I'm sure it varies from company to company and assigment to assignment. Like mustangj17, I do what's essentially technical writing (among other things) for the insurance industry. I made $40k starting last year. I'll make a little more this year.

I'm not getting rich but I'm getting by, which I was not doing before. I hope to find the time to write more creatively soon. At least now I have some hope of finding that time.

 

$40-80 an hour? Christ. You realize that's about $80,000-$160,000 a year, right?

They're not even paying that in DC. Not to start out at anyway.

 

So are tech writing jobs almost all contract work? Or would they be more fulltime type work?

 

Lots of both.

 

I should clarify that I'm talking about freelance gigs that wouldn't come close to 40 hours a week and might have some gaps in the work that can last a week or two or more. Also they're paying no benefits. Those are the kinds of jobs craigslist has.

 

I'd give up a pinky toe for that salary range.