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Subject:RE: Career paths for technical writers From:"Lisa Wright" <liwright -at- earthlink -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 23 Jun 2003 22:32:45 -0700
This is a good thing to think about! You can get where you're going
without planning, but a lot of times planning makes things easier. I've
done all of the below at different times:
* Product management and/or project management is a natural direction
for tech writers to go. You've got a ton of product knowledge that you
can bring to bear on discussions of future product development.
* Or, if your company does consulting projects, take a look at what kind
of documentation they have to support the projects. Do they need
planning documents? Documentation of customer specific issues?
* Information management could be another area. Take a look at how your
company tracks its own information and see what sorts of organization
might help. Especially in small companies, it's easy to lose track of
information because it's in a salesperson's head or on some consultant's
hard drive.
* Testing. (I hate formalized testing.)
* Marketing.
* Interface design. Unless your company is doing a ton of new
development, this is probably a part time thing. However, there's a path
there that leads either to design or usability/human factors, which can
get pretty interesting.
My path always ends me back at writing though, so I may not be the best
example. I'm not particularly interested in a "career path." I think my
"path" is probably in the things I write about and not in what I'm
called while I'm doing it.
There was a great post about this a couple of years ago...I'm pretty
sure it was on this list (and not on HATT). I'm thinking it was Connie
Giordano. You might search the archives. She talked extensively about
the role she had created for herself that went way beyond tech writing.
I know, I could hardly be more vague. :-/ I do remember that it was a
*she*, though! Hmmmmm, d'you suppose we could get a gender qualifier on
the search engine? ;-) Maybe someone else will remember.
Lisa
-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-53104 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-53104 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com] On Behalf Of Karen
Casemier
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 1:25 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Career paths for technical writers
I've been thinking lately about different career paths for technical
writers other than simply straight vertical movement (jr. writer, sr.
writer, project lead, documentation manager, etc.). I'm interested in
how someone who has done well in technical writing might advance their
career both vertically and horizontally (if that makes any sense!) -
moving not just to management of a documentation department, but getting
involved in other areas besides straight technical writing.
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