2 Technical Writing Topics: Future Prospects and a Marvelous Book

© Ugur Akinci
As I was trolling through the Internet I was surprised to come across these income figures for technical writers. This confirms my general observation that, recession or not, tech writers continue to make excellent income with two conditions: 1) They should be working in the hi-tech industry. And 2) They should have seniority. But even the average incomes are not that bad in a time period when finding jobs — let along finding good paying jobs — can sometimes be a challenge.
Supporting this observation, is a brief report I heard on NPR: Yes, the overall unemployment rate in the US is still too high but did you know that the rate is under 5% for those with undergraduate and/or graduate degrees? Since most tech writers have college education, that partially explains why tech writers still have a good chance (in hi-tech sector) to find jobs and get paid adequately.

(Copyright-free photo courtesy of Unsplash dot com)
A second topic I’d like to bring to your attention today is a marvelous book I stumbled upon about training: Telling Ain’t Training. If you’d like to get more insight into the “learning and customer center”training and documentation, I highly recommend you read this volume cover to cover. You’ll be enriched by the experience and you’ll become a much better technical communicator because after all training and instructing is what we do all they long, isn’t it? We just call it “documentation.” I think other than that, what we are doing as “writers” and what “they” are doing as professional trainers overlap significantly. We have a lot to learn from one another. This book charts a great path for that convergence.