Re: First Jobs that Grow into Careers as Technical Writers

["Gary S. Callison" <huey -at- interaccess -dot- com>]

On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, John Cabral <John -dot- P -dot- Cabral-1 -at- tc -dot- umn -dot- edu> wrote:
> I'm interested in starting a career as a technical writer, and I'm 
> looking for some information to refine my research.   In particular, I'm 
> wondering what types of positions (especially entry-level) are effective 
> starting points for such a career.

What an excellent question. I'm not sure how useful my answer will be to
you, though. 

>   I've been reading the list and appreciate the necessary skills, but
> I'm wondering what type of job  titles I should be considering as
> opportunities to develop those skills.

In my experience: any job that affords you the ability to write stuff down.

"Forklift driver": In college, I had a job driving a forklift for an
international air-freight forwarding company. The office manager
insisted "It'll take you forever to figure out the paperwork, because
there's so much of it, it's all arcane, and the rules that govern how
this stuff is filled out, broken down, and who gets what copies are, of
course, not written down anywhere."

So I wrote a manual. Years later, when I needed a piano moved to Hawaii, I
called the old company. They were still using my manual. That's right-
their operations are governed by the rules set down by a $7/hr forklift
driver.

"Infantry soldier": Out of college, out of money, and going nowhere in
Detroit, I joined the army. Carried a machinegun until someone realized I
knew how to work a computer, and then got moved to Intelligence. Enlisted
staff jobs in the army that are backfilled by non-MOS-trained personnel
are 'taught' by the "follow me, write down everything I do" method, which
caused three more manuals to happen.

"Network Administrator": After the army, I moved to the IT industry. I had
a few 'stepping-stone' jobs, but my first real career job was in a
network operations center for a large bandwidth provider. My first week, I
was greatly taken aback by the admonition "Don't try to do too much. You
won't understand how anything works here for a year or so." Why? Because
there's no manual, of course. So I wrote another one. The guy who insisted 
I wouldn't understand? Axed in the first round of layoffs, while I
stayed there until it was time to leave. And my documentation? Still in use. 

Last year, with an IT-heavy resume slanted heavily at a net admin / NOC
job, I found a small company at a job fair who were looking for someone
prior-service military with a heavy technology background that could write
documentation.

And that's how I got my first "Technical Writer" job, ten years after I
wrote my first manual.

> A little about me: I'm a recent Ph.D. in philosophy  (graduated in July 
> 2002) and have decided against pursuing a career as an academic. I have 
> lots of experience as an instructor and have designed distance education 
> courses.

Good! You are qualified to drive a forklift then. Good luck to you, sir!

-- 
Huey


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