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Re: Career paths of lone technical writers

Subject: Re: Career paths of lone technical writers
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2002 10:44:58 -0800

jmalone -at- ResourceConsultants -dot- com wrote:

My upcoming annual review has me pondering my career path. If you are or have been the lone technical writer either for a project (I am now) or for a company (I have been), have you found it career-limiting? In general, what's been your career path: mostly vertical or lateral?

I'm not sure that I understand the reasoning here. Why should being a lone writer have any effect on your career?

So far as I can see, any tech-writer has four main choices:

- Stay doing the same thing (a popular choice, I suspect, because it allows for flexibility)

- Become a documentation manager (in the case of a lone writer, I am assuming that new writers are hired)

- Become an independent contractor, possibly hiring other writers (a more independent and stressful way of becoming a documentation manager)

- Use writing as a stepping stone to another position, such as product manager or marketing manager.

On the whole, however, I would suggest tech-writing as a field for the career-minded. I don't think that many tech-writers move more than a few rungs up the ladder. In fact, strange to say, I think that most tech-writers remain tech-writers because they like what they do (or like it better than any likely alternative).

--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"I have lead a good life, quiet and artistic,
Now I shall have an old age, coarse and anarchistic."
- Utah Phillips




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RE: Career paths of lone technical writers: From: Secara, Maggie

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