Technical Communication Jobs

Jobs, jobs, jobs- most everyone needs one, even if they don't want one! Business writing- so many think of it as boring, annoying, or just plain frustrating. Technical writing and technical communication may sound like dry topics, so technical writing jobs may sound undesirable. But in addition to being one of the ways to get paid to write, and on top of being a highly paid job, technical writing is different than just being a marketer or a documenter of data.

Do you want to know the ins and outs of a company, or do you not care and just wish your company sucked less? Luckily, if you are a tech writer, you have the opportunity to do both! If you couldn't care less about your company either way, you can also work as a (highly paid) freelancer.

There are two main conflicting views of writing as a profession, the first embodied by the quotation
"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things."-Bobby Knight

the opposing view is summed up by Thomas Berger, riffing on the idea that people climb Mt. Everest because it is there:

"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there."

If we were to try to synthesize these two views, we might conclude that writers feel compelled to write despite having other abilities or better things to do with their time. If writing is a compulsion, and you are going to do it anyway, it follows that you may try to get paid for it.

Other common professions that include a lot of writing are:

 Journalist-A fast track to getting overworked and jaded
Marketer-A fast track to getting very, very jaded
Novelist- Writing a bestseller has been compared to winning the lottery.
Scriptwriter- See "Marketer"


One of the nicest things about being a tech writer is that you get to work with people outside your field-many people feel isolated at work, or insulated in their positions. This makes you more valuable at work, both by virtue of knowing others and by virtue of having a good understanding of many facets of a business. (And, if you don't care for a company, it is easier to network with soon-to-be former coworkers if you have talked to a variety of them before!)


Even if you are highly cynical about the world of work in general, technical communication is not a bad way at all to pass eight hours. White collar jobs are becoming scarcer, and permanent positions are being replaced with temporary or contract work. Luckily, working on contract as a technical writer pays highly as well!