Technical Writing as a Career

Technical Writing can be a great choice for anyone who has passion for writing and has interest to learn and communicate information of the technical world—General Science, Engineering, Information Technology, Bio-medical industry, Aviation, Pharma & Drug Discovery and others into a structured format for the intended audience.

Technical Writers role existed almost in every product industry where they needed to communicate the product information to its internal stakeholders and customers as well. Everywhere either and an engineer, a product specialist, or a documentation specialist took-up this role.

The fact remains unimportant to many of the organization’s biggies that high quality documentation can make a big impact on customer satisfaction. It increases usage, gives more successful implementations, and creates better references and happier customers, which then drive more sales. It is an image-uplifting act which most of the organizations fail to realize. Good documentation can sell even product. You can have competitive advantage over your competitors of having high quality documentation.

Today, the ratio for developers and technical writers are somewhere 20 or 30:1. This is for the obvious reason if the bosses are technical person, they value that art more than anything. That also reflects the poor image one organization has toward its documentation. Organizational chart does not show a progressive look to the technical writers. Many organizations have typically failed to sustain because of the dearth of enough documented archival knowledge, which helps most of the new employees to understand the background of the product.

Although technical writer’s whole job is about communication, they are sometimes the last to hear about future development plans or last-minute changes to a release. Truth is, Tech writers are good advocates for the user, always thinking about the user's point of view and they can make valuable addition in the development of the product.

Technical writers do tend to be arguing for clarity and logic in everything from error messages to how features are implemented. But that's hard to do when you never talk to any customers. Even the customer’s feedbacks are shelved with customer support department, leaving technical writers imaginative on their own.

Technical writing is no black magic and if many feel, anyone can become, they are wrong. English is no short cut, which can be learnt in a year or two like Java or C++. This field is in nascent stage and growing horizontally in sheer numbers. Today, technical writers are joining the band wagon, but it is not too far that these writers would be evaluating and weighing their career goal in terms of their achievement on vertical ladder. Future will hold the platform where technical writers will make it big or break.

Technical Writers Training

The profession of technical writing is no more an isolated domain of west. The past decades have ushered the emerging numbers of technical writers in India too. To those who have not come across this profession or this opportunity, technical writing is the art and science of writing about the technical subjects to help end users of the technology.

Most often the requirement of becoming a technical writers demands advanced knowledge of English writing. In fact the good knowledge of English writing holds good to comprehend complex technical knowledge into simple English writing that helps user to understand the technology. But don’t get misguided that to be a technical writer you need to have prior experience of journalism or mass communication or a post graduate degree in English. If you have flare for writing in English and if you can write simple and crisp English, you are in the league. However, if you are transitioning from Journalism or have a post graduate degree in English, you will have an edge. Yet again, I would say that writing is more of an art than science and it can be anyone’s passion.

Today, the opportunity in the market requires you to be good in English. Many companies would prefer you to be on-board and train you in the technical writing on job. Most others would like to have a person who has some exposure of technical writing and knowledge of styles and tools of the trade.

The technical writing training offered by different institutes in different parts of the country exposes you on the knowledge of the following:

• Different style guides of technical writing
• User guide authoring and publishing tools
• Help authoring and editing tools
• Image editing and designing tools
• Classroom sessions on procedure and instruction writing
• A glimpse of different kinds of documents written by a technical writer
• The different technological domain in which technical writers are getting employed
• Creating a sample documents  

The training institutes are meant to teach technical writing and not English writing. You will be disappointed if you think that they can teach you technical writing without you knowing English writing. However, you can complement your average level of writing skills with the expert level of authoring tool knowledge which often required in trouble shooting and that makes you a production specialist.

If you have good skills of writing and preliminary knowledge of authoring tool, getting a job as a technical writer will not be tough. Today, almost all the industry driven by technology requires technical writers into their fold. Being a trained technical writer would greatly enhance your chances of getting a job.

The Crystal Ball

Technical communication in India could be an analytical topic today to talk about as to where the caravan is moving in terms of its past beginning, present strength and the future prospect. It is hard to collate the information about the beginning of this skilled profession on the yardsticks of its maturity and prevalence in terms of numbers of years in India. Subsequently, tracking the information about the industry which had the privilege to employ the technical communicator first into its fold, is another tough job.

However, notably the present scenario entails a lot about where the large chunks of technical communicators are employed today. They are mostly part of the documentation division of Information Technology industry in India. The seer number is quite difficult to arrive at because the employment ratio of software developer, tester and technical writer is not computed. In absence of that varying data, approximation helps, which gauge the range in between 4000 to 5000. Looking at the size of the industry, the future suggests that the number is bound to grow. Specifically Indian technical writers proving their metal that they can do exactly the same what developers and tester have done so far in terms of producing cost effective quality work. But it is not as easy as writing the piece of code, or testing the functionality of an application, that too in a foreign language. It is really a very difficult proposition and technical communication in India by far is in nascent stage to analyze correctly.

But if we look at the crowd, the substantial increase in the number of technical communicator hired and employed today, this profession looks very promising. As per my personal assessment goes, the technical documentation especially in India have been the complementary shoot of its parent company abroad which houses native English language technical writers. The obvious option as choice for Indian technical communicator is not yet ascertain.

Although, how do Indian technical writers fare on the parameter of quality of writing, is still in the phase of black box testing. The IT industry presently faces the dearth of technical writers and aspirant from writing or non-writing background are trying their luck to break into this profession. Experience in technical writing is another question, about which many falter, boast and try to override others. Many who boast more number of years spent in technical communication can not truly claim to be a better technical writer. Similarly less experienced communicator can not be under rated in terms of quality of writing. Technical communication is more of personal skilled area than a trained profession. The reason is, you can teach a person how to write codes in java in a year or two but writing good English takes years of toil. And, probably, writers can neither be created, nor be made, they just happened to be writers.

The crux is, technical communication in India would definitely have edge if true writers are willing to make it their career. Today, many sinners are in the garb of seers and separating them from the real seer would take some time as the profession grows and matures.

Above all, at the time when IT is facing the challenge of speculating faults from other industry and trying to contain, it’s testing time even for technical communication in India, which is directly proportional to the growth of the IT industry. How you look at the crystal ball today is the perspective defined and the brightness of ball would be the reflection of the light it receives

Pitfalls of Technical Writing

The documentation need does not always grant good status and valuable position for technical writers in any of the product development company. Most often when you interact with the technical writers, they do not seem to be very much willing to let you know where are they heading towards in their career or they are happy about their role in the organization. The truth is that they themselves do not know what is their fate except the fact that they have a job, which is paying them well presently.

Ask most technical writers about their workplaces and you will likely to hear the same complaints. The developers do not follow any specs and never tell what they are up to. They slip their schedules by months, but the minute they are done, you are supposed to have the docs ready, like by magic. The developers and development team is the hub of activity and the core team in any product company. Obviously, this is. However, it is not only the team in the organization. If so, does organization not need other teams like testing, documentation and SQA team to work simultaneously. So, why is there a bias?

Worst over, most of the developers are bad in their verbal and non-verbal communication. If you learn their English, you forget yours and that is the end of your year’s toil of learning little bit of English. Yet, they will only meet the customer with their lanky, unshaven English language. The scenario is, you keep on changing the job and everywhere you go, you will witness the same thing happening. Moreover, many a times you report to your boss who does not have slightest idea about what you do and what it takes to do such job.

I remember, in my last company, a Software Requirement Specification document was returned to our development team with the comment that it contained 90% language error and it can not be accepted in its present form. We had to do the cleaning and correcting of the entire document to make it presentable. Yet, Technical writers are often struggle to prove their Return On Investment in absence of any established metrics for measuring it. Irony is that technical writers can make difference in any kinds of the document organization produce, be it client serving documents or archival documents, yet their importance is highly misunderstood.

The fact remains unimportant to many of the organization’s biggies that high quality documentation can make a big impact on customer satisfaction. It increases usage, gives more successful implementations, and creates better references and happier customers, which then drive more sales. It is an image-uplifting act which most of the organizations fail to realize. Good documentation can sell even product. You can have competitive advantage over your competitors of having high quality documentation.

Today, the ratio for developers and technical writers are somewhere 20 or 30:1. This is for the obvious reason if the bosses are Technical person they value that art more than anything. That also reflects the poor image one organization has toward it's documentation. Organizational chart does not show a progressive look to the technical writers. Many organizations have typically failed to sustain because of the dearth of enough documented archival knowledge, which helps most of the new employees to understand the background of the product.

Although technical writer’s whole job is about communication, they are sometimes the last to hear about future development plans or last-minute changes to a release. Truth is, Tech writers are good advocates for the user, always thinking about the user's point of view and they can make valuable addition in the development of the product.

Technical writers do tend to be the user's advocate, arguing for clarity and logic in everything from error messages to how features are implemented. But that's hard to do when you never talk to any customers. Even the customer’s feedbacks are shelved with customer support department, leaving technical writers imaginative on their own.

Technical writing is no black magic and if many feel, any one can become, they are wrong. English is no short cut, which can be learnt in a year or two like Java or C++. This field is in nascent stage and growing horizontally in sheer numbers. Today, technical writers are joining the band wagon, but it is not too far that these writers would be evaluating and weighing their career goal in terms of their achievement on vertical ladder. Future will hold the platform where technical writers will make it big or break.

Global Language: Can’t get without English

Today’s Era of modernization has always lured us to study in English medium schools and colleges in order to be ahead in the career and job hunting. Its really pathetic and heartening that in spite of knowing that English is the language, which holds the key for the individual’s success in today’s world, our politicians have not promoted it in the school and colleges. Rather after independence the political will to promote Indian language, that is precisely regional in nature, and Hindi, which is the national language of the country, have taken the importance to be taught in the school and colleges and made compulsory as a vernacular.

It is but natural to have love for the national language and regional language. However, it should not be at the cost of ignoring to teach the language which can help you earn your livelihood. The motive to introduce regional and national language in government school and colleges gave a political opportunity for the politicians of the country to achieve their goal based on the language divide. English was out of the school in the primary school and introduced only from class six. Almost all the state government followed the same principle and English medium education remained isolated in few of the public, central, private and convent schools and the colleges.

Although, even in isolation, the worst English medium schools and colleges were considered better in education standard than so called good government schools and colleges. Most of the government schools and colleges deteriorated over the years because of lack of willingness of the teachers to provide good education. Yet, most of the IITians, IIM’s aluminous had government school education. However, they are again handful in sheer number who can hold few of the top positions in government and in the private jobs.

Whereas on an average, who can steer the main work of the corporate sectors and government sector, the convent and public school educated youths were always in demand because of the English language skills. Though we say that Hindi is our national language, English remained our official language because of the regional divide and lack of common will to make Hindi the national language in true sense and spirit. It lacked the political will to do so and because of that English survive the onslaught. Good that English survived the step motherly treatment.

Many of the so-called nationalist and pseudo nationalist might term me the anti nationalist in terms of the praise and importance I am showering for a foreign language. That too, this is called our oppressor’s language. And love for this language is clearly a sin in terms of the love for the nation. But if it is so, all the politician’s sons and daughters are the bigger sinner than me. They all have got educated in English medium.

Once while doing my post graduation, one of my teacher very clearly and forcibly had stressed upon that if you want to get something good out of your life, learn to speak and write good English. It was an advice, but off course it was a requirement for me. I studied from government school that too half of my schooling was done in the hinterland background and coping up to know English well was a major challenge for me. Well, over the years, I have grown and learnt English as days passes. Every day is a day of learning for me. And today because of English I am able to feed my family and myself. Kudos to English, which is sustaining my life.

The globalization has thrown open the door of opportunity and it is this language, which can help any one who wants to be successful. The global language, which can get you to the top, is none other than English. In past one decade the jobs, which are outsourced to India and to the Indians, are because of its English knowing talent pool. In future also more jobs will be offered to Indians because of their English communication skills. This is the fact and it is going to stay. Whether government believes it or not, without English our future is going to be ruined. It is no more the language of class. It is the language of mass. The better we know, the better we are equipped for the job.

Sensing the scenario, now even the common man thinks of sending their children to English medium schools. More CBSE, ICSE English medium private schools are coming up and these are no doubt attracting the crowd. The government schools are facing stiff competition. Especially in Kerala and Karnataka the government schools are the last resort. Other states also following them though bit slowly. People have lost faith in corrupt politicians who have kept the people aloof from the opportunity and now in this age of globalization they do not want their children to miss the opportunity what they might have missed because of not knowing English.

I wish good luck to the people for their wisdom of understanding the change and taking appropriate steps for the future of their children.