Simple. I want out. I’m a senior writer with almost a decade of experience. A contractor like many others. I’m tired of being paid the lowest salary with no benefits. (I get offered healthcare but it’s expensive. What’s the point of paying monthly for it when I can barely put food on the table.)

Anyways, I have a BS in CS. I feel in love with documentation back in 2020. Decided to break into this dead end field. My current contract is almost over. I’m tired of looking for new contracts every few months. I’ve been doing contracting for years. Meanwhile, I’ve witnessed the laziest full time technical writers who just collect checks. Frankly, I don’t blame them. Management sucks!

I typically don’t have a technical writing manager. But, when I do, they’re a nightmare. Mixed messages. No clear directions. No training. Raising concern about process issues is seen as problematic. My current manager rolls their eyes whenever I ask them for their opinion on proposed workflow strategies. They just don’t want to work.

I’m forced to work at the office. Meanwhile, no one talks to each other, 0 collaboration, and everyone just looks “busy.” There is barely anything to write about. The manager expects me to find out the timelines for projects and to scope out the requirements without bothering SMEs. I was pulled once for asking “too many” questions and to get “straight to it.” Absolute lunatic work. Now, AI is slowly taking over. Many are finding a way to eliminate technical writers all together. Why not just have an agent write about it? Right.

So, I want to pivot to another career. I just don’t know what career is transferable. Please help!

6 years as a tech writer. Salary (65k) has never gone up and probably never will unless I move to a new company.

I’ve been applying like crazy and all I can seem to land are interviews for contract positions (no benefits) with senior-level FT expectations.

Is anyone else on the market experiencing this?

Edit: Thank you, everyone, for your advice and support. I truly appreciate the compassion and care you all have shown 💗

Hello, everyone. I hope the week is off to a great start for you all.

The TL;DR of this post is that I need to get out of technical writing, or at least my current job, due to scorched-earth levels of burnout, and I would appreciate suggestions as to what fields or jobs to look for that are actually hiring. I’m based in the western US.

I’ve been in my current position for more than five years. After a mental breakdown this weekend, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can no longer sustain the burnout I’ve been feeling for two years.

The problem I’m facing is that, despite a burning desire to switch fields entirely, I seem to lack the training and skills, or maybe just confidence, to qualify for other jobs.

When I think of my current job, I become lightheaded, and my body starts to tingle, go numb, and feel weak. I am mentally paralyzed at work. I feel great when I’m not working and have been evaluated for depression.

I want to leave on my terms and without being fired, but I am at a loss as to what type of job or career to look for. I need to get out of this field as soon as possible.

Please feel free to ask questions if more information is needed. Any insights are greatly appreciated. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read and respond to this post.

(I've posted in this group before so you can search my posts in this group for the whole story.)

I know AI is a dirty word in technical writing these days, as we are all aware technical writing is one of fields extremely vulnerable to job loss. But can anyone suggest AI tools that are available to me now that are either documentation focused or can be tuned to be used that way? I have to speed things up and automate where I can. Before you cuss at me, read on.

I am a technical writer with a small but fast growing company that has had no semblance of document control, management or standards since at least 2021. To say everything is a mess is an understatement. I write in Word because that's what we have. SharePoint is used like a global network drive. Everything is dumped in a library folder, co-authoring is universal and nothing is named, revised or controlled in any way. This has become culturally embedded in the company. Nobody on my team even knows what document control is or why it's necessary. My manager considers any of my time on it a time-wasting hassle.

I'm new, the only writer, and I'm drowning. The lack of truth sources, a control system, templates, processes, etc. has meant I had to create basic ones on my own, which is taking time away from writing the documentation, which averages 100-200 pages each manual, guide or reference.

I've built up Chat GPT as a half-ass truth source with what I can find and what SMEs tell me. With the right prompting and rules it can generate some content quickly but I always have to edit it. I'm using Co-Pilot to automate some things within Word but it's slow and flakes out a lot.

Any ideas on how I can leverage current AIs or even custom LLMs to speed this up?

,

Tech writing has been in a bad place lately due to AI and the overall economic outlook/job market, as we all know. However, I'm seeing a ton of sentiment lately that AI is starting to crash:

• It's not actually taking people's jobs
• AI companies are massively jacking up token costs to keep up with compute and profitability
• More than half of the data centers are getting cancelled or delayed
• Model performance is stalling, and banks are pulling back
• Companies are already blowing through AI budgets, not even halfway through the year
• NVIDIA execs are saying that AI is more expensive than workers
• Investors aren't buying the AI washing layoffs anymore.
• AGI is still a sci-fi concept, and LLMs are built in a way that is intrinsically impossible to achieve AGI with. No amount of throwing hardware at it and scaling can do this.

Of course, companies are still going for a last-ditch effort with mass layoffs continuing and calling out AI. We all know what happened to AWS and Snowflake, but we're finally seeing some investors scrutinize this. Microsoft and Amazon stock tanked after announcing massive spending deals, and CloudFlare stock dipped almost 20% when using AI as an excuse for layoffs the other day.

When this AI bubble pops, we'll keep having AI, of course, but it seems like we can't sustain this free lunch era for much longer. Companies will very likely pull back on AI costs when model performance begins to match pricing.

I know companies aren't seeing it now, but LLM performance fundamentally relies on documentation and human-written prompts, context, Skill file instruction, and someone who architects all this. Literally, who else does this better than a tech writer?

AI is an insanely powerful tool, but the promises these AI tech bros advertise, and what execs are buying into to appease shareholders, are a pipe dream. I know it's rough right now, but I'm convinced that this has to be a transitory period.

If anything, this is just making a stronger case for tech writers to become Information Architects in a more strategic sense.

Do you think tech writing will come back? Right now, things feel absolutely F'd with the job market and what company execs are falling for, but I don't think this will last. Even in software, I feel like the shift will just move to Content Ops and Documentation Engineering while we see traditional tech writing stay for things like Aerospace, Medical Writing, Hardware, DoD, and highly-regulated docs where the human-in-the-loop is critical.

Hi all,

I'm looking to buy a new laptop and was asked what I'll be using it for. I realised I don't actually know if there are any specs we tech writers can't do without. Aside from a good word processor and image editor, I can't think of anything.

So I ask of you: what do YOU look for in a laptop for your tech writing work? Are there any laptops in particular that are a sure win, or alternatively an absolute no-go?

Title. It's something I'm considering. Any other tech writers in the same boat or already working towards pivoting to the med field? If so, what role are you aiming for and why?

Edit: I mean leaving tech writing altogether for a medical job.

I have 8 YoE in technical writing, 5 of which were spent at Apple, and a lot of my projects were extremely successful.

Yet, I haven’t found a full-time job in 2 years. I’ve been a contractor ever since I got laid off from a startup company, which I left Apple to join (I know. My fault. Right?). Every contract has been hell: poor management, FT employees barely doing any work while I do all the heavy lifting for a fraction of the pay. No training. No PTO. No benefits. No retirement plan. NOTHING. Plus, I took a 60% pay cut. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

1. Should I get out of tech?
2. Am I wasting time applying to FT jobs through LinkedIn and direct company websites?
3. Should I build a portfolio?

I worked tirelessly. I understand AI has complicated the market like never before. I’m simply burned out. I want a change. I can’t go years living like this anymore.

My son is a Senior and preparing for his first year of college. He plans to pursue a career in Technical writing. I am afraid with the rise of AI that it won't pan out for him in the future. If there is anybody on here who already does this for a living, what are your thoughts??

I have a job interview next week for a really great opportunity at a startup. I enjoy talking about my job and how I approach it, but the past few years at my current position have been such a dumpster fire that I’m worried I won’t have anything to show or speak confidently about. I joined this company as an entry-level writer on a team that originally had 7 people, and the first year or two I got to work on a lot of great projects where my skills grew a lot. Over the past 3 years though, all but me and one other writer have been gradually laid off and we have basically just been keeping our heads above water and my team lead has not been receptive to trying to improve the situation. We’ve been struggling just to maintain our doc set, much less engage heavily with new features and tech. I have a few larger, recent projects I can share, but with all the pressure and workload, I’ve never really been able to do the full doc process as I would like and am not sure I can really speak on it. For example, more often than not I don’t get an opportunity to actually interview an SME or collaborate on a cross-functional team. It’s just “hey we need this, just get it out ASAP please, we don’t have time for all that”, and my attempts to solicit useful feedback are usually ignored. There was a lot of structure and process at the beginning of my career, but between the company no longer prioritizing docs and my team lead’s inability to chart a course for us, it’s all kind of fallen apart.

It’s hard because I do think I’m good at my job, especially given the circumstances, and I’ve tried to make it work and have learned to be adaptable. But I don’t know how I actually demonstrate that in an interview. I’m might be overthinking it, but I’m been spending hours each evening trying to prep and trying to think of how I would answer any possible question they could ask, wanting to be able to explain everything perfectly and just right. I’m feeling so discouraged and overwhelmed, any advice?

Hi! I have a question about the different areas within technical writing. I have been working as a technical writer for some years now, and the part that I enjoy the most is explaining how something works, why it works that way, and the internal mechanisms behind it (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, networking, ...). So not "how to use it," but rather "what is actually happening under the hood."

Is there a specific type of technical writer that focuses more on understanding and architecture than on tutorials or user guides?

I have a free Gemini trial for a few months, and I'm looking for ways to experiment with it in the CLI while creating or editing docs. I'm currently using it as a glorified spellcheck (via Vale mostly), translator, and for some coding assistance, but I'm wondering if there's more I can do with it.

What additions are you guys making to the markdown file to optimize y'all's workflows?

How do you get information/l and verification of content from SMEs who are poorly engaged, skim content reviews, don’t reply to emails, give final approval too easily, etc.

I work in a manufacturing environment. I recently spend a year doing a deep review and update of one of our main product manuals. Sixty pages and highly technical. I got it approved through our mechanical engineering department and published in January.

We just got customer feedback that a critical measurement is wrong. While looking into that another segment of instruction was identified as missing.

This will cost us considerable time and money to correct. I don’t like how it reflects on my effectiveness.

These aren’t things I can verify on my own without getting the information from our engineers.

Im thinking of requiring a review from a customer who may be willing to support us and also making the approval process much more formal—signatures and explicit endorsement of the material.

Anyone else struggle with this and find a better solution?

Not long ago I saw posts about technical writers getting laid off at Snowflake. Now I’m seeing they’re hiring a Head of Learning and Content Experience.

The job description talks about transforming things and using AI to improve output, so I’m wondering what changed. Is this just a restructuring or a shift in direction?

Not planning to apply, just curious. Anyone here have context?

ive been noticing this problem alot lately while rewriting technical documentation and simplifying things for different audiences

even when i fully understand the concept im trying to explain, my version still ends up following the same structure or sentence rhythm as the original source more than i want it to

its not copy paste obviously, but it also doesnt feel fully independent either

especially with technical writing where there are only so many clear ways to explain certain workflows, definitions, or processes

sometimes ill rewrite a section multiple times and later realize i basically kept the same logic flow with different wording

i tried doing things like outlining first, waiting before rewriting, explaining concepts out loud first etc which helps a bit

I've been trying a simpler way to review rewritten sections lately but still figuring out if it actually helps separate clarity from structural similarity.

what made this more interesting is realizing the issue isnt really vocabulary, its influence from the source organization itself

once i started paying attention to sentence patterns and flow instead of just word replacement, i noticed how much technical writing naturally pulls you toward the structure you just read

curious how experienced technical writers here deal with this

do you intentionally break structure when rewriting docs, or do you mostly focus on preserving clarity and accept some overlap as unavoidable?

i've been noticing something while rewriting documentation and technical explanations lately

even when i fully understand the concept, my wording still ends up following the structure of the original material more closely than i expect

the terminology usually has to stay somewhat consistent for clarity, so changing everything completely can actually make the writing worse or less accurate

but at the same time, keeping the same structure starts feeling a little too derivative even if the content itself is rewritten manually

i started paying more attention to this after comparing drafts and reviewing how different writing tools analyze phrasing, similarity, and structure in technical content

for people working professionally in technical writing, how do you usually balance accuracy with originality when rewriting or simplifying documentation?