I ask these two titles because the current theme seems to be less about doc writing and more about doc platforming, management, accuracy, accessibility, and overall orchestration.
Do you see the field actually surviving and evolving into these areas? How do you upskill to do this? Will this make our jobs more important and stable?
Hey everyone,
I'm curious how you're all preparing for interviews these days, especially with how quickly AI is changing both our work and the expectations for technical writers.
Beyond the usual behavioral questions ("Tell me about yourself," "Describe a conflict," etc.), are you preparing for questions around AI? For example:
Are any of you building hands-on projects to talk about in interviews? Practicing with AI interview tools? What questions are you preparing answers for?
I'd love to hear what's worked well for you. Our role is evolving big time, and I'm curious how you're adapting your interview preparation.
Maybe this will help someone in the future, too.
Thanks!
Been a tech writer in the software industry for 12 years. In that time learned cloud computing, lightweight scripting, and AI tooling. Really enjoyed it.
Most of my team was laid off last year and I'm working a temp role right now, but seeing lots of FTE job openings requiring a bachelor's in computer science.
How important is it to meet that exact requirement in this field right now? I have a master's in creative writing and undergrad in sociology, but not sure I want to invest $40K and 2 years in a bridge master's in CS.
The tech world is sobering up on AI hype, despite companies desperately trying to cut jobs and be efficient. More stories come out about people in various professions getting rehired, AI being way too expensive for what it’s worth, etc. My current company has been scrambling to replace writers and failed each time, despite cutting down writer numbers and all of us our drowning. They can’t find a new tool or AI combo, shift docs to PMs, or find any reliable solutions, yet they still cut down on our teams to make finances look good anyway…
Do we have any tech writer-specific cases where cutting down writers or implementing AI backfired and resulted in rehiring?
Are we yet to find out?
I’ve been a writer in the cybersecurity space for 5 years at big companies. I have great skills in Docs as Code, working with SMEs, etc. I love my job, difficult SMEs and all. But AI has killed my passion and the constant existential threats have ruined my mental health. I went to school with the goal of becoming a tech writer, and I didn’t fall into it on accident like so many do. I graduated in 2022 and shit hit the fan right away in the industry.
I’m seeing more and more rhetoric that AI is backfiring, blowing up budgets, and investors are getting skeptical. I can see the profession surviving and even increasing headcount once AI hype and costs level out, but no one really knows. I’m also down for documentation engineering and moving into a more technical, information architecture route, but I fundamentally love the craft of writing.
My backup plan would be security GRC but I’ve had barely any luck getting interviews. My current company is drinking the AI koolaid after we were acquired and forced to follow what they say. My current gig is on borrowed time and I’m so sick of the nonstop job instability. It seems like every company is dealing with this so it’s not like this is escapable.
Does anyone see this getting any better or should I give up and pivot careers? This is all a giant disappointment and source of anxiety but I have another 30-35 years left to pay bills and hopefully retire if I’m not recovering from constant layoffs. I’ve got a baby coming in a couple months and a future to secure. It’s getting hard to have faith that tech writing will make a comeback, or remain existent at the very least.
I need to make printed docs look compliant with the newest branding guidelines. Since I’m not a designer, I don’t want to design the whole look from scratch.
I wanted to get a mockup design from our in-house designer and then implement it in Flare, but according to the management this is not efficient.
Therefore, to make things more efficient, they want to waste time on explaining what our designer already knows to a third party.
Question: is there any legit company that offers making customized templates in Flare?
Before you ask, the answer is yes — they want to save my time by paying someone external to click the buttons in Flare too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As an independent contractor I outpaced the tech writing crew in the HQ location by 300% last year. They were forced to do work because I took the source of truth away from them and put it in the US location.
I was "rewarded" by being forced out of my contract into a full time position at a 24% loss in revenue. The dude I reported to left. Then the other dude I reported to (and frankly, bought into his vision) was fired before he had too much respect and power.
That allowed the leadership to bring in non-software people with old school manufacturing ideas that have nothing to do with releasing software (let alone knowing how a tech writer should operate). We don't want to hear about who is blocking you on the line.
We want to know where the new documents are! What do you mean you can't write up a process that you've never seen. We gave you that table of information.
Finally... Maybe you should use AI tools to do this stuff.
Never mind that I've been spending days cleaning up dev documents that used AI. An example... 3 sections (3 full opening pages) were essentially the same thing told different ways. I took all three sections and made one section out of them. For that... "It looked better when there was 3 sections there. It looked like we had more to show the customer." Really???!!!???
Then I start to notice how everyone now wants documentation the AI way.
Then the new manager, only been there a couple of months, had decided to bring in his tech writer hire, so we can nail down a style with AI.
Everything I've done is now being completely ignored because the mass turnover that either forced others out or they quit, and that has left this massive vacuum for new people to make the same mistakes that have been tried before. There's also no one to SME anything because the new people are learning things for the first time by trial and error or from documentation I was able to create.
I'm guessing that I won't last much longer just based on the MO of getting rid of people and the fact that they don't like the AI documentation to be fixed.
I actually liked writing, editing, learning a new topic, working with SMEs...
Now I'm told to use to take the prompt that my manager gives to me, to apply against the engineers' report (which is illegible as it's now AI slop), run the output through a second AI to edit it, then dump it back into review (the engineers are also using AI to speed up review).
I went to school for this. I engaged in self improvement and learning. I found the job challenging and stimulating. Now it's bureaucratic hell. I'm not doing anything I couldn't have done straight out of high school.
When I complain I'm just told to use the tools.
I feel like Ian McKellen on the set of LotR who started crying, saying he didn't go into acting to yell at a green screen. No art, no effort, only product. Could product be better with effort? Doesn't matter; use tools. Use the same way as everyone else. Make product.
Could things be better? Could we innovate or use the tools to automate the boring repetitive stuff like checking layout against the style guide? No. All of it. AI does work now; all I do is make the prompt go.
How soul crushing is that? Other than being thankful I'm employed at all, what is the dang point?
I've noticed that I spend more time rewriting introductions than any other part of an article.
Lately, I've been drafting the main content first and coming back to the introduction once I know exactly where the piece is going. It feels much easier that way.
I'm curious how others approach it.
Do you write your introduction first, or do you leave it until the end? Has one method worked better for you?
I’m really interested in the world of technical writing but I feel daunted and a bit scared by the techy side of it. I’m pretty far from STEM in many ways, and as I read about what this field entails I keep coming across a bunch of jargon like API, SKD, SOPs, RFCs, and I also know very little about coding (I’ve learned R for a stats class but that’s it). Is this a difficult learning curve, and will it get easier? I am afraid!
I am learning about technical writing and am currently practicing by writing a guide on configuring my Neovim environment. I'm struggling with the introduction. When I ask AI tools, they suggested I write a comparison between Neovim, VS Code, and CLion to argue why Neovim is superior. However, this feels too promotional. In technical writing, is the goal to persuade a general audience to adopt a tool, or is it strictly to instruct an audience that is already interested?
P.S. I really appreciate the warm and thoughtful response you guys have given me 🙏
Hello all!
I am currently going into my final semester of my English-Technical Communication bachelors this upcoming Fall and I wanted to get some advice on beefing up my resume/portfolio.
What certifications or project recommendations does anyone have to aid me in finding an internship? I know that it's a long shot to get a full time position related to technical writing (especially as someone who only has hospitality/serving/bartending experience), so I'm shooting for an internship.
I've been trying to get better at writing technical tutorials that people can actually follow instead of just explaining a concept.
I recently published a Medium article where I documented a project I built to automate the process of tracking new CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities and generating Sigma detection rules. It is a pretty specific cybersecurity topic, but I wrote it as a step by step guide with the goal of making it easy to understand and recreate.
I'm still figuring out what makes a technical article enjoyable to read, so I'd really appreciate honest feedback from other Medium writers. I'm more interested in hearing about the writing than the project itself. Was the structure clear? Did it keep your attention? Were there parts that felt confusing or unnecessary?
If you have a few minutes to read it, I'd genuinely appreciate your thoughts.
Our documentation team is officially facing a layoff after leadership decided to fold our responsibilities into the PM and engineering teams. This has left me so distraught. In fact, I knew something was off when one PM sent me their draft articles to copy edit, which was so odd. I did it anyway. Then they asked me to publish them, just to get hit with the layoff news a week later.
I understood why they were rushing me to complete the copy edits on so many articles in such a short time span. I still did it anyway, which I also realize wasn’t the smartest move. I overexerted myself, working so hard to complete insane task loads that take weeks in just days.
Now, I am simply devastated. I have no savings. Only two weeks of severance. I’m trying not to panic. I want to be realistic. What other opportunities should I consider? I worry about pursuing another technical writing role just to experience yet another layoff.
I have seen "complex technical concepts into clear accurate content" on job descriptions and LinkedIn profiles more times than I can bear.
I'm a Final year mechanical engineering student, with a passion for writing, editing, research;
l am trying to break into technical writing, is there a chance l can be lucky to get a technical writing role/job remotely.
I really want to be financially independent with my writing skills, are there are any other types of writing or writing job options you could recommend, l am just starting out, l have minimal experience, but I learn very fast and l'm passionate.
I need help creating a styler for a docbook. The PTC site has a styler guide, but it seems to just describe the various menu items and features of the styler instead of a step by step "How to" of how to set it up. I purchased the Arbortext 102 book from Single-Sourcing, but it is based on a dita structure rather than a doc book and it's difficult to navigate through the instructions for a docbook as it continues to reference modules.
We gave a styler that was thrown together by some other individuals without any official training, and it works for the most part but because it's not set up correctly, additional functions like an idex or setting up headers and footers with page numbers...etc. is extremely challenging.
Is there ANY type of documentation or training available for a docbook configuration? Single-Sourcing has one, but it's $2500 and I'm not sure my company will pay that huge amount.
Help!!!
…with bare bones details and scope.
Get an urgent request at noon yesterday for a slide deck needed by 10 am this morning.
I couldn’t stay late yesterday, so I worked three hours on it, coming in super early this morning to give myself four or five more hours to hash it out.
It’s a brand new project, in the very early stages of development, and the boss has to give a presentation on what it is. An overview the phases, what the developers are working on, all that jazz. Screenshots of the UI.
So I cobble something together try to make it as pretty as I can. I don’t really know how in-depth they want the details. Made it sound like it was more of a high-level view with so many details still being vague, as the developers haven’t started engaging stakeholders yet.
So I go into hyper focus mode, bust my ass to pull together a 30 slide deck. I turned it in on time, only to be met with a lukewarm reaction at most.
A half-assed thank you, clearly disappointed I didn’t pull a unicorn out of my ass when I was fed a donkey.
Days like this make me question whether I want to do this anymore. About 90% of that information, the boss didn’t know until I gave it to them. And now somehow they’re gonna act like I didn’t give them what they wanted? They didn’t even know what they wanted in the first place.
I’m leaving for a week vacation tomorrow. Nice way to start. I’m gonna spend this week thinking about whether I’m going to stay when I come back.
Hi all, my last couple roles have been more knowledge management and information architecture than straight up technical writing.
I'd like to discuss the KM role, share some challenges I've run into, and ask how other KMs are approaching things.
The biggest challenge I run into over and over again is creating team buy-in and socializing the new knowledge systems or best practices I'm introducing. It's super easy to take a couple courses, do some reading, and come up with a list of best practices for KM. The hard part is implementing those practices in real teams and getting people to actually care and participate - even when it would *clearly* improve how their team functions.
Example: So like, I was in a meeting yesterday explaining to the UX people that I was creating onboarding for each specific role/team. I showed them their new UX onboarding page in our company's KB and told them (nicely) they needed to own the page and contribute things to it there so it's in a central location and we can see what's being updated (they had been passing around a random word doc of random links). Their reaction was silence basically, or seeming not to understand. This makes me think I need to just assign one owner to their onboarding page and meet with that person specifically to go over the details and guide them to help them manage it for their team. But who am I to assign ownership like that? I'm not their manager or something. But when I don't just straight up assign ownership, it seems like everyone just shrugs it off and never does anything.
So how would you go about this? How do you integrate knowledge systems into teams who already have a status quo, and where you're just the "new technical writer". Discuss with leadership, and get leadership to implement? Straight up assign ownership of resources? Spam reminders and emails?
And then also, how do you integrate documentation into development processes and Agile sprints? Or rather, how do you enforce it? As in, making sure people are documenting project notes publicly, release notes, updating old docs in the KB. We have an issue with people just passing around links to different word docs, excel sheets, SharePoint stuff, Claude skills, with no central organisation. Everyone agrees it's extremely confusing and siloed and they don't know what's going on, but when I try to implement knowledge management systems they often fall flat. I'm starting to think I need to collaborate with leadership more and convince them of what we need and then let leadership handle the enforcing part.
Or does anyone have good examples of systems that integrate well into teams that are easy to keep going once they're in place? I know "systems" is broad, but they could be related to anything - onboarding, releases, project notes, audits. Looking forward to discussing!