How technically savvy do you need to be to work as a technical writer?

[RusticBohemian]

I have a background in journalism and plenty of other writing experience, but no engineering/medical/programming knowledge, other than a basic grasp of HTML.

I'm wondering if technical writing is feasible for me. How much background in technical writing is necessary? What sort of technical writing jobs would I look for?

Also, there are a number of online tech writing courses. Can anyone suggest ones that are worth taking?

[Watchmaker]

IMO, writing skills are much more important (and much less common) than technical skills for technical writing jobs.

[Villanelle]

I do freelance writing and have had almost no luck getting into tech writing.  Everyone wants an engineer/biologist/astrophysicist/whatever-ist.  With no background in the subject matter, I've always struck out.  I did eventually have luck--thanks in large part to a friend who knew me and my writing and was working on editorial staff for a speciality magazine for an area in which I have a lot of knowledge--getting into some other types of writing, but even that was tough.  Everyone wants published writing samples.  Once I had a few of those, so many other doors opened.

It can't hurt to look for technical writing gigs, but if my experience is indicative of the norm, you may have slightly better luck with non-technical writing.  If you have any area of specialty knowledge, find publications (online or print) and pitch ideas.  If you have any writing samples, it will help.

Also note that the range of pay for freelance writing is crazy.  Everything from $20/hr to $300 for ~1000 words (which would be about $120/hr at my typical writing pace for most subjects that don't require interviews or exhaustive research.)  It can sting to take those $20/hr gigs, but it may be worth it to build up a portfolio. 

[techwiz]

IMO, writing skills are much more important (and much less common) than technical skills for technical writing jobs.

Agree, I have worked with technical writers on a few projects and I have no problem answering all the technical questions for them. Having the writing skills and the ability to deal with all the formatting and other red-tape requirements is far more useful for a technical writer IMO and experience.  The best technical writer I have worked with knew how to ask us tech people the right questions and was a master at writing in the format the upper exec's wanted.  This person was always in high demand, I think the upper management poached that person for themselves or they got a lucrative contract somewhere else. 

I think the hard part is getting hired as a technical writer, it not a position that normally exists in any of our teams.  The above person was brought in under a special project and ended up being so valuable they kept them around. Since they moved on to bigger and better things we have never had another technical writer.  Management expects us to do our own technical writing. I miss our technical writer! 

[GuitarStv]

Just basic computer skills really.  Our technical writer asks developers and QA to demonstrate things that she has trouble working with, and nobody ever gives her a hard time.

[Villanelle]

I'll note that there is a difference between whether as a tech writer you really need a deep understanding of the material, and whether you can get hired without it.  I'm sure there are places that hire without that knowledge, but they seemed few and far between when I was looking.  They didn't expect a Master's degree in Astrophysics, but they didn't want an English major who took high school physics.

[Cranky]

My daughter is a tech writer at Epic Systems. She has an undergrad degree in English and a grad degree in theology. They sent her to basically a coding camp at first.

[CatamaranSailor]

My first job when I quit education was as a technical writer. I was a computer hobbyist but (at the time) not very technical. I really enjoyed my time as a tech writer and consider the skills I learned essential to my subsequent career success. I loved my time as a tech writer!

To answer your question..the answer is not really----->BUT you need to have the ability to learns things fast. Understand what the engineers are telling you and then translate that into language your target audience can understand. Engineers are a unique form of life. They design all the cool stuff we have, but most of them are terrible at describing what it is they do or how the stuff they design actually works.

They will tell you "You need a multi-directional inertially enhanced force impact generator." Your job is to translate that to "hammer."

I was writing technical manuals aimed at operators and technicians, so I had to understand first the procedures I was writing about. I was lucky, because I could go out on the floor and actually practice them, step by step.

My lack of knowledge was actually helpful, because I needed to break things down into small chunks so I could understand and then document them.

Technical writing is far more about taking a complicated subject and putting it into layman's terms than it is learning to be tech savvy.

Even highly skilled technicians or operators appreciate simple, straight forward language.

Modern technical writers need to know how to write simply, break down complicated tasks into easy to follow steps, document with appropriate drawings, pictures or videos.

The problem is...you will become an expert on so many of your company's products or systems, you'll get promoted out of the profession.

Feel free to PM me. I'm happy to talk about the field for hours. :)

[ChickenStash]

I haven't been a tech writer but I have worked with a number of them over the years in the IT space. There's never been an expectation that they are experts in the tech they were writing about. We expected them to take our engineering gobbledygook and collection of chicken-scratch notes and ask a bunch of clarifying questions to convert it into normal-people-speak. It was actually a bit helpful to get someone new that wasn't familiar with the system as they often came back with clarifying questions that we didn't think of since we were so used to working with it.

There was always some time needed for new tech writers to get up to speed on the company, language, and overall environment. Everyone expected that and took it in stride.

[cool7hand]

If you're the sort of person who can teach yourself anything, writing skills are more important than the technical. You can always learn a new subject if that's within your skillset.

[mm9356]

I've been a tech writer at software companies for about 25 years. I got my first tech writing job with a B.A. in literature, some writing samples, and no formal tech writing education. (I'm not claiming that would be a sure bet today, just explaining my background. Unfortunately, I don't have specific courses to recommend.)

At my current company, we would be looking for the following if we were hiring an entry-level tech writer:

* Task-based writing samples. By "task-based," I mean a procedure that tells the reader how to complete a certain task.
* Familiarity with common style guides, or at least with the concept of writing to a style guide. We use Microsoft Style Guide (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/welcome/) and the Chicago Manual of Style.
* Experience with an authoring tool would be a plus. We use MadCap Flare. Adobe FrameMaker used to be a popular authoring tool.

I agree with others that writing, research, and organizational skills are more important than any specific "tech savvy" skills. HOWEVER, if you do have tech-related areas of experience or interest, those could work to your advantage. Example: My company makes software used in [industry]. If you happened to have both relevant industry experience and decent writing skills, you would be an attractive candidate to us. Industry experience is by no means a requirement, but it may be easier to break into tech writing if you look for areas of overlap between tech writing and your own personal or professional experience.

In my own work, I use HTML and CSS regularly. I don't write code, but I do incorporate code samples in my documentation. I've had to teach myself a bit about Docker and JSON files and APIs in general. I use source control (Git, Bitbucket).

I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions, if you like. Good luck!

[marcus_aurelius]

I'm not in technical writing, but I've been experimenting will ChatGPT and other LLMs (large language models) recently. If you haven't done so already, give it a try.

My conclusion is that the vast majority of jobs that involve writing to create marketing and sales content will be automated away in 5-10 years. Technical writing is a niche area, but I think even it is highly susceptible.

I found this blog that may be useful: https://www.cherryleaf.com/2022/12/what-will-chatgpt-mean-for-the-future-of-technical-communication/. The author says: "The text generated by ChatGPT is a little wordy, so it probably would need an edit before it was published. So we think ChatGPT could be a time saving tool for Technical Authors, rather than a threat to their careers." I disagree with that conclusion since one can ask ChatGPT to make its output more concise. And if it's already so good today, the next generations will be indistinguishable from magic.

[thesis]

My understanding is that technical writing is all about being succinct, direct, and getting the message across. From the software development perspective, most devs can't write to save their lives, but those like me who have liberal arts degrees end up writing essays instead, which is just as bad.

Most tech companies try to do their writing in house for things like wikis using the people who wrote the software. But a larger company might need to actually publish an API or instructions for their clients.

As others have said, focus on the writing aspect, especially if you know you like that. That can so easily be applied to many different places. But if you think the programming side is somewhat appealing too, it's really not magic, you can totally learn, and you wouldn't need to go too deep to probably learn what you need. Also checkout markdown and how it's used with something like GitHub. There's a big difference between pro projects and noob projects, so there's demand for that sort of writing and documentation, too.

[Villanelle]

I'm not in technical writing, but I've been experimenting will ChatGPT and other LLMs (large language models) recently. If you haven't done so already, give it a try.

My conclusion is that the vast majority of jobs that involve writing to create marketing and sales content will be automated away in 5-10 years. Technical writing is a niche area, but I think even it is highly susceptible.

I found this blog that may be useful: https://www.cherryleaf.com/2022/12/what-will-chatgpt-mean-for-the-future-of-technical-communication/. The author says: "The text generated by ChatGPT is a little wordy, so it probably would need an edit before it was published. So we think ChatGPT could be a time saving tool for Technical Authors, rather than a threat to their careers." I disagree with that conclusion since one can ask ChatGPT to make its output more concise. And if it's already so good today, the next generations will be indistinguishable from magic.

I was on a zoom meeting for one of the companies for whom I freelance. All the writers, along with senior staff, meet every other month.  This subject was specifically discussed.  They said that while chatGPT might be used to generate ideas for blog entries, it would not replace writing them because the content was fairly flat and unoriginal.  They generated an article during the meeting and yes, the writing was not great.  There was nothing inherently wrong with it, but it was flat.  Also, there is discussion and disagreement about who owns the content.  Can you post ChatGPT content for commercial purposes, or does ChatGPT own that content (or at the very least need to be cited)?  For that matter, since ChatGPT pulls content for inputs, do they own their content?

It's very messy.  I think we are a long ways away from most writing being done by AI, though it might make jobs like mine faster (and thus lower the pay) because someone could generate an article and use that as an outline, so it would only be heavy rewriting (far, far more than a copy edit) rather than generating 100% from scratch. 

For someone okay with lower quality content or less captivating text, it might be an option.