Becoming a Fledgling Technical Writer
Read about the essentials of launching your career in technical writing—as a student, career changer, or a professional looking to specialize.
Last updated
Read about the essentials of launching your career in technical writing—as a student, career changer, or a professional looking to specialize.
Last updated
Whether you're starting out your professional career in the technology industry or looking to pivot from a related field (such as technical solutions, legal/business writing, or technical content writing), understanding the role of a technical writer and the pathways to a career in technical writing is important.
This blog post outlines what a technical writer does daily, presents potential internship projects, and offers guidance on finding opportunities to kickstart your career in technical writing.
In a large-scale tech company, a technical writer often collaborates within a documentation team that consists of other writers, each specializing in different facets of a company’s suite of products.
Your day might include:
Brainstorming and proposing strategies to improve the information architecture across multiple documentation sets on the documentation site.
Managing content through sophisticated version control systems, reviewing substantial pull requests, and resolving complex translation conflicts by using source control tools like Git and translation services like Transifex.
Working on cross-team projects with teams like Websites, Product Management, and Engineering to ensure documentation is available for product announcements and rollouts.
Helping documentation teams address documentation debt, which can be a symptom of hypergrowth (e.g. a software company doubles in size over 1-2 years). By neglecting documentation needs as a way of saving money, time, and/or labor, software companies may appear "agile" on the outside, but these organizations face expensive consequences in the long run when every customer requires a Sales Engineer or creates a Support ticket just to onboard onto a product offering.
Internships at these sizable organizations are structured to provide a comprehensive view of the documentation process at scale. Interns might be tasked with developing and releasing customer-facing documentation such as:
Writing software product documentation (including developer docs, API docs, translation, and contextual help) or getting started tutorials for new features.
Participating in large-scale audits of legacy documentation to align with current product offerings and style guidelines.
Working with content designers to standardize, test, and wordsmith in-app copy to provide an optimal user experience.
Collaborating with engineers on authoring and editing content for internal and external Engineering Blog posts.
Piloting and executing internal newsletters/email communications about monthly wins and delivery of an organization's Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
Contributing to or consolidating knowledge base articles into a single source of truth that supports teams worldwide.
For example, I was an intern at Salesforce for two summers in my undergraduate career. In my first summer, I migrated over 500 knowledge base articles from a legacy Google Site, which we deprecated, into an incident and event management playbook for site reliability engineers (SREs) in Confluence.
In my second summer, I associated these knowledge base articles with real time alerts in the Salesforce platform so that when an SRE gets paged about an alert, they are provided with a knowledge base article with information about the particular alert and troubleshooting instructions to initiate the incident management process.
When you’re looking for a summer internship or a co-op program at a medium or large-sized company, it’s important to be vigilant and proactive with their career websites:
Regularly Check Career Sites: Medium to large-sized companies often update their job boards with internship opportunities regularly. Bookmark the careers pages of companies like Salesforce or Meta and set biweekly reminders in your calendar to check them.
Apply Promptly: Once internships are posted, recruiters are often bombarded with a queue of resumes (we’re talking like over 100 applicants in the first hour of the job posting). Aim to submit your application within 2-3 days of the listing going live. Delaying your application can mean missing out on the opportunity.
Prepare Thoroughly: Given the competitive nature of these positions, ensure your resume, cover letters, and any required samples are polished and tailored to the specific role and company culture. Highlight experiences that demonstrate your ability to work with people, write well, and complete projects in a timely manner.
Securing a position as a technical writer in a medium to large-sized tech company offers unique challenges and rewards. With large teams and substantial resources, these roles provide an opportunity to significantly impact how users interact with technology.
By understanding the scope of the role, staying diligent in your job search (whether it’s in technical writing or another opportunity), and applying swiftly, you can position yourself as a strong candidate ready to gain professional experience in a medium or large-sized company.