What are the career prospects?

Outlook⎹ Salary⎹ Career advancement⎹ Career transition

Outlook

The outlook for technical writers is very positive, but what you’ll find online is a mixed bag: from promises of a dream job to automation-themed scaremongering. The truth, like usual, lies in the middle.

Some claim that the profession will soon die out due to advancements in machine learning. As a translator, you’ve probably heard that about your job too, and yet you’ve been doing just fine… or have you? Even if you were replaced by a robot, don’t worry – you’re not jumping out of the pan into the fire.

Translating is about translating, but technical writing is not nearly as much about writing. Machine translation has come a long way, but machines won’t talk to subject matter experts, analyze the target audience, plan projects and design visual materials; not all at once, at least, and not until they’re told to.

Machines can write human language just as they can write code (and they do), and yet programmers don’t feel threatened… which is baffling. Mass unemployment leads to societal collapse, and that will affect everybody – jobless or not. With that said, there’s still some work to do before the apocalypse! ☺

There are tools for generating API documentation, and yet we need now more API writers than ever. Still, docs for developers aren’t end-all of technical writing. There are tutorials for end users, there’s process documentation, and there are physical products too; and fidgeting with a gadget in your hands, let alone documenting this experience, is something really difficult to automate.

Even pessimists agree that creative jobs will be the last to go – and this leads us to UX. Indeed, the trend now is to create user interfaces so intuitive as to not need product manuals. What is needed as a result, though, is more UX writers, UX designers, and other careers that are common transition paths for tech writers. Oh, the irony.

Technical writing may be changing, but only to involve more human interaction, planning, and design skills, and these are quite safe from robots. In the US, technical writing jobs are estimated to grow by 12% till 2030, which is faster than the average¹. The field is on an even steeper rise in Poland. There’s hardly a better time – and way, for translators – to jump on the tech bandwagon.

Salary

The salary survey conducted in 2021 by Techwriter.pl shows the following results:

This is according to answers collected from 83 respondents who identified as “Technical writer (specjalista ds. dokumentacji technicznej)”.

The large variation in earnings is due to different responsibilities and experience hidden under the same job title. Junior and senior salaries can vary a lot. Technical writers with engineering background, e.g., with strong coding skills, are also expected to make more.

In general, technical writing offers a good pay, both in Poland and abroad. Software and new technology sectors seem particularly lucrative.

Career advancement

The “vertical” advancement for junior tech writers would be to take senior roles and develop skills within a given niche (e.g., coding). Alternatively, they can take a managerial route: become technical leaders who manage smaller teams of technical writers. Then they can advance to technical managers and lead multiple teams or departments of tech comm professionals.

Career transition

Instead of progressing upward, some technical writers decide to transition to one of the related fields: user experience, graphic design, information architecture, editing, translation (yes!), and so forth. Since they generally know their documented product well, tech writers may develop business skills and turn into analysts or product owners. Within IT, they can become Scrum Masters, testers, or developers. In short: if you ever miss retraining, you’ll have options.

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