Re: Questions on the Business End of Things

["Barry Campbell" <barry -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On 4/19/06, Jon Steiner <jon -at- htmhell -dot- com> wrote:

What technical writing jobs that you know of pay more than $100K per
> year on the East Coast?


Senior consulting positions in the metro NYC market can easily go in the
$100K+ range.  Salary.com recently reported some very senior staff writers
in New York City topping out at around $130K.  If you are working for
yourself on an hourly or day rate, and you can keep busy full-time, you can
conceivably do even better than that in raw income, though providing for
your own insurance (medical, errors and omissions, etc.) can be very costly.

Of course, you're faced with the same cost of living problem in NYC that you
would face in Silicon Valley.  Market rate for a nothing-special 1BR
apartment in my Manhattan neighborhood is around $2K/month.

Generally speaking, as a (very) experienced writer, the closer you are to
the business need/to revenue generation, the better your job will pay.


> Do you know of anyone who has ever risen beyond TW to become a VP at a
> company?


This is the dreaded "career path" problem.  I know plenty of writers who
have gone into management; some of them are managing other writers or
creatives, others have made the move into more general technical
management.  One person I'm thinking of in particular got her PMP
certification and is now a very successful project manager.

A lot of senior writers find that the smartest move is to go into business
for themselves.  I did this for several years before returning to the
regular-employment fold as a senior consultant with a multinational; working
for yourself can be very rewarding, but it's not for the faint of heart.  (I
recently changed jobs and am now the chief writer at a small but growing
boutique consulting firm; I'm writing some proposals and doing a lot of
process-improvement work, and enjoying it hugely.)

- bc

--
Barry Campbell <barry -dot- campbell -at- gmail -dot- com>
http://campbell-online.com
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