![]() In other words, not enough to do more than survive in the Bay Area. ![]() The highest salary I've ever made from any TW position was around $136k USD gross, however after taxes it comes out to $103k. Most of my contracts have been with Google, but only ever as a TVC. ![]() I currently work contractually for tech companies in the SF Bay Area. I majored in Interactive Media Design with a minor in journalism. I have absolutely zero professional engineering experience, nor a CS background. I also worked as a game developer for the better part of a decade. I've been tech writing for 6 years, however have more than 10 years total of editorial experience, including 9 years of working as a game journalist. Good stuff, thanks for your candor, everyone. I'm glad to see this post come up, and the breadth of comments. I also think being on my school’s newspaper in high school and learning how to interview people was super useful, since I do a lot of SME interviews as a tech writer. The tl:dr was that it’s a much better idea to do the former than the latter. There were none in their country at all, so they faced a choice- hire good writers and teach them the tech, or hire people with tech backgrounds and teach them to write. There was an amazing Write the Docs talk a few years back about a software engineering company in a remote location trying to hire technical writers. It’s really hard to be a technical writer if writing isn’t your strong suit. The English major was very helpful in making me more comfortable with writing. I think putting “Python” or “Java” on your resume would have a similar stand-out effect, so long as you can back it up. But the fact remains that ~80% of the writers I work with at Google don’t have tech degrees, but do have technical knowledge. The CS degree was huge in getting me noticed at first- I was told my resume was pulled out of a pile for my internship because of the unique double-major. Oh, and if you’re still in school, try to get a tech writing internship.Įdit: tried to fix the dropped arm, and I forgot to say this is the software industry I’m referring to, but it was probably clear from context. Salesforce is also a great place to be a tech writer that’s where I worked before moving to Google. The Google TW interviews involve reading simple code and being able to understand what it’s doing. Pick a coding language and stick with it. My biggest piece of advice- don’t be afraid to apply to big companies, and make it a point to study up on your technical knowledge. 108k base, minimum 20% bonus (but has been higher the last few years due to performance) and the rest in vesting stock. Went into tech writing right out of college with a CS English degree. ![]() Seattle area, just over 4 years of experience (more if you count my internship). I’m with you salary transparency only benefits workers and keeping quiet about it is only a gift to our employers. This sub does not have the same history of salary sharing as the CS subs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Posting of Job Opportunities are not of personal gain, even if OP is involved in the hiring process as its primary purpose is to provide visibility of employment opportunities to this community.Ĭontent from links that would be considered self-promotion are permitted for the purposes of discussion, so long as the content is discussed by copying and pasting a text post, not via the use of a link. This primary personal gain may be in the form of links to direct website traffic hits (such as to personal blogs, and/or product sites), text and/or images with the purpose of advertising services that the OP is involved with, and/or content that is deemed to be misleading to the community.ĭO enhance your text posts, if desired, using links to externally-available documentation, Websites, and other supporting information that helps to explain the text post. "Self-Promotion" is the action of sharing content to this sub-reddit through the use of a link (Any kind of link, regardless if it is a image, or a website/blog/advertisement), or in a text post, that directly benefits the OP for the primary purpose of personal gain. Posting a job opening? Please include at the beginning of your post title. Short, sweet, to the point, and accurate. You probably describe your work to other people as: "I write instructions for a living." Oversimplified? Yes. You may publish libraries of papers and manuals but your name will never be on them. ![]()
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