Re: Career Path

[Linda Castellani <castle -at- CRL -dot- COM>]

On Fri, 31 Jan 1997, Emily Betters/Shiva Corporation wrote:

> Hi everyone.
>
> I know I have touched on this subject before, but I want to address it in
> another way.  What is the career path for a technical writer?  Being new in the
> field, I am having a hard time understanding it.

        This is a very good question, Emily.  I think the answer depends
a lot on the company you work for, and whether what you want is to
advance higher within the tech writing department, or advance out of it
into another area of the company.

        The company structure provides the response for the first
condition, that of advancing within the department, because some
companies only have a single writer, some have writers and managers, some
have junior writers, senior writers, team leaders, project leaders,
managers and directors, and so on.

        If your question is about where else is there to go besides tech
writing within the company some typical paths that I have seen are into
marketing, customer support, QA, and programming.  I know of one writer
who went from writer to marketing to general manager, but his case was
the exception rather than the rule.

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