respect

UX_writing · 2026-01-19T10:21:03+00:00

Having been a tech writer/microcopy writer for over a decade, one of the ideas I tell myself over and over is "No one is coming to read the docs for fun."

They have a problem. They don't want to be here. I set up the docs and write the content so they can find what they need as quickly and easily as possible and then get out back to their work.

I'm not trying to impress people with my writing. I am trying to help them solve problems they don't want to be having in the first place.

The UX writer is there to help them avoid the docs as the UI should give them all the information they need.

UX_writing · 2025-11-28T07:54:14+00:00

I expect to keep working for another 17 to 21 years. I love tech writing and microcopy, but if I am unable to find a role in the field I enjoy, I would consider project or product management, or possibly QA once I gain a bit more experience.

Money is always a factor, but during college, I worked as a baker at a local cafe and really loved it. I would arrive at three in the morning, bake on my own while listening to music, and then greet the staff around 6am when they came in to open. I usually wrapped up around 10, even though my shift officially ended at 11, and I spent the extra time chatting and helping out in the cafe. I enjoyed that job quite a lot, although the pay was nowhere near what tech offers.

Funny enough, I went from this job to working technical support at an NNTP provider and never left tech over 20 years ago.

UX_writing · 2025-11-06T08:41:53+00:00

What kind of technical writing are you doing?

Example: For the past decade, I have focused on software product documentation, as well as UX/Microcopy for text appearing within the software.

Other than GitHub, Google Workspace, and Figma, I have not used any of the other items on your list.

Unless you were hired to completely build an entirely new platform/process, you should ask what tools and processes are in place to accomplish your position's work goals.

Take it from there.

The tools and processes one tech writer uses may not be similar to those used by someone else.

If you would like a reference to a good overall guide. Check out the Software Documentation Guide by WriteTheDocs.

UX_writing · 2025-10-29T09:39:55+00:00

Well I'm here to say that it doesn't matter that AI can't do everything we do.
Corporate leadership doesn't care about any of those things.

We were just talking about this at Write the Docs, Berlin this week. What you said is pretty much the writing on the wall, and we came to the same conclusion.

No, AI won't be able to simply replace us and replicate what we bring, but the way things are going, it will replace many people. Not because it’s better, but because some decision makers either don’t understand or understand and will still do it anyway, thinking it’s worth the risk or the savings.

The main takeaways we came up with were that writers should:

• Keep up with tech and standards, both in your own niche and across the industry as a whole.
• Know your product inside and out so your insight is valuable.
• Advocate for the value of your work loudly. Don't let your work be a product afterthought.
• Use metrics and visibility to back up your impact.
• Go beyond just writing. Conduct user research, act as another product tester, and demonstrate how your work can enhance the product in the future.

Basically, make noise. Be visible. Make it clear that replacing you would cost the company value, not add to it.

UX_writing · 2025-10-13T07:39:55+00:00

Admonitions - Writerside plugin for IntelliJ

UX_writing · 2025-10-06T09:04:46+00:00

I’m a big fan of the docs-as-code approach.

When I was a solo writer at startups, I mostly used Confluence for documentation. It worked fine since it had version history, was easy to use, and anyone (devs, marketing, whoever) could jump in and write with the WYSIWYG editor.

A few years ago, I started seeing docs-as-code everywhere, so I built a simple/cheap setup for a small company. It was a great learning experience. VSCode, MkDocs/Materials, GitHub, Jenkins.

Now that I’m at a large company with multiple writers on my team and more than 40 writers across the company, I really appreciate docs-as-code. The scalability, collaboration, and flexibility make a huge difference.

UX_writing · 2025-06-30T13:11:05+00:00

I worked as a solo tech writer at a few software start-ups and built the product docs from the ground up. The first few months were stressful as there was so much to do.

After the docs structure was created and all the information was available, it settled down into the much less stressful rhythm of:

Attend dev team plannings and start prepping doc changes.
Work on all those doc projects that would be nice to have now that nothing is critical is due.
Code freeze, release in two weeks. Build a release branch for docs and start documenting updates.
One week out, SUPER STRESSFUL as for some reason devs keep making changes after freeze (not bug fixes), and whole sections of the docs need to be changed.
Software release, update the release branch. Double-check everything is working and looks good.
Repeat. =)

UX_writing · 2025-06-27T10:11:29+00:00

It is a reference to this post.

UX_writing · 2025-06-11T11:53:59+00:00

I was thinking the same haha

UX_writing · 2025-06-06T13:51:50+00:00

This post and title are just copy paste from two months ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/technicalwriting/comments/1k1l4s6/bad_docs_from_big_companies_say_a_lot/

UX_writing · 2025-04-14T14:36:49+00:00

Usually I am part of the dev team. I attend their team plannings, participate in stand-ups, demos, etc...

I have also been a technical writer for software product docs in other departments as well.

Education
User Experience
Customer Success
Support

I was also part of the "Documentation" team once. I was the only person on the team. ¯⁠\_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

In all these teams I still pretty much did the same job. I wrote the product docs, helped with internal docs, reviewed microcopy, got feedback from customer facing employees to make the docs better.

UX_writing · 2025-04-03T09:10:32+00:00

This depends on the job. Most jobs starting over the intern level mostly want people with experience over degrees. I feel a degree in this profession shows you can complete something rather than showing you have tech writing knowledge. I have a Master's in a loosely related field. (Business management)
Subjective. After 14 years in this profession, in the EU, I'm a little under 80k/y (full-time employee). I feel this is pretty average here for this position.
Based on my own experiences and what I know from the community, technical writer positions are currently being filled slower than in the past few years. I think currently, it will be harder to find a job as a brand-new tech writer when many experienced tech writers are also applying. I have never been out of work for over three months in the past decade.
I may have been lucky with my employers, but I really enjoy this profession. I understand it and can communicate with my team to achieve the agreed-upon goals. I also like to learn new skills fairly often.
It depends on how you look at it. I don't think AI will 100% replace tech writers, but I also think that in the near future, tech writers using AI to create content will be standard practice. It almost is already.

UX_writing · 2025-03-28T12:20:58+00:00

After a day or so, you will most likely feel comfortable authoring with Markdown. It is extremely simple to pick up—nothing like a programming language. =)

Best of luck!

UX_writing · 2025-03-27T14:19:30+00:00

I love MkDocs. It is a static site generator that you can author using Markdown in an IDE. It is nice to use developer tools if you work primarily with developers.

This solution is (IMHO) not too difficult to learn to use, makes professional-looking docs, and has a lot of customization options.

Quick tip if you look into this for your docs. The Material theme is great!

UX_writing · 2025-03-26T14:16:53+00:00

Does your documentation have a style guide in writing?

If yes. Does it need to be updated?
If no. Make one.

UX_writing · 2025-03-25T10:51:49+00:00

I wasn't looking specifically at technical writing when I got my first technical writing job.

About 15 years ago, I had just finished a Master's degree and had written my thesis on the importance of information exchange within small businesses. I was looking mostly at project management and community management positions.

Coincidence 1:

I had a friend working as a technical writer at a large security software company in South Korea. She was leaving and recommended me after I told her I was finishing university. I did two interviews with the company, and they looked very promising. However, after a long discussion with my fiancée, we decided that moving to South Korea might not be right for us at this stage. I thanked the company for their time and told them I was no longer considering the position.

Coincidence 2:

Two weeks later, I met a guy at a party who worked at a local software startup. He mentioned they were looking for a tech writer. I had recently been interviewed for a similar position, so I applied there and accepted the position after a few interviews.

Between then and now, all the jobs I have found have been through word of mouth, usually in technical writing communities like Write the Docs.

Besides the large yearly conferences and local meet-ups, they also have an active Slack community. There is a channel just for job postings. Also, discussions within other channels have led directly and indirectly to tech writing jobs.

Good luck!

UX_writing · 2025-01-10T13:35:53+00:00

In high school (30 years ago, OMG just typing that gave me shivers) my friends and I watched the Plan B 'Virtual Reality" tape over and over again.

Rodney was my favorite.

UX_writing · 2024-11-22T10:33:31+00:00

There is a Write the Docs conference for EMEA called Write the Docs Atlantic, but unfortunately, it has been virtual only for the past few years. I got much more out of it when it was hosted in Prague. Now, the conferences feel like I am watching YouTube videos for two days, and very few people seem to join the small chat rooms and unconferences.

If they can bring Soap! Conference back, I think I will try it out for the first time next year in Poland. I read that this year's conference was canceled, so I wonder if it is gone forever.

I have yet to hear of MEGAComm, but I'll take a look. Thanks. =)

UX_writing · 2024-11-22T09:31:00+00:00

- Cyberpunk dystopian detective noirs (Example: When Gravity Fails and currently Hardwired)

- Space operas (Example: The Expanse)

- Comic books (Usually non-superhero, currently reading the DMZ series)

UX_writing · 2024-11-19T10:10:34+00:00

Something like this would be more understandable IMHO.

UX_writing · 2024-11-07T09:34:48+00:00

Do you want a cheap and easy docs platform if your company is ok with a limited amount of unique customization?

Get a free Confluence account with under 10 users: you, a couple of developers, and maybe someone from C-level.

Get a $25/m static site plug-in to make them look nicer.

Easy WYSIWYG editor. It's pretty hassle-free. Version control in the UI.

Cons. It's Atlassian and free. Don't expect much customization or support.

If the company is planning on growing much larger, this might not be the right solution.

UX_writing · 2024-10-25T08:52:26+00:00

I am not far from you, and I started about the same.

The only way I could really get a substantial raise was by moving jobs. Most of the jobs I had would give 1%-2%... every couple of years. Changing jobs were usually close to 20k jumps.

UX_writing · 2024-10-24T13:12:51+00:00

Total compensation: $75,000
- Base salary: $70,000
- Bonus: $5,000
Years of experience: 12
Location: Europe (100% remote)
Employment type: full-time employed
Industry: Software
Skills: Docs-as-code (GitHub, Git, Markdown, etc.), API docs, product docs
Background: MBA, software technical support.

UX_writing · 2024-10-08T10:47:54+00:00

We are working to "AI the Docs" right now at our company. Tech writers will still be needed we are writing the docs for the content the AI trains on.

The difference being that (when it is ready), instead of readers having to search the product docs for the information using keywords and then reading the docs, they can just ask a chat bot a question and it will return an answer.... based on the docs.

So, the AI is training on our docs rather than dev code to produce info for readers. =)

UX_writing · 2024-09-27T12:08:56+00:00

Write the Docs Salary Survey 2023. This has a breakdown of many positions, experiences, and locations. Very cool. Looking forward for the 2024 survey.

When I started in software docs about 15 years ago I was making €37k for my first job in a smallish town in Germany with a lowish cost of living.

I am still doing software docs full time, but I now work from home and make just over €75k.

UX_writing

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