A Career in Technical Writing: Two dates to the prom

The Bullet Points

• In the world of contracting, the entire hiring process can take place over the phone
• Knowing the right tool (even a little) can get you the job
• Per diem is a fixed daily allowance for meals and/or lodging
• Beach time is payment for staying with a company but not actually going to work until they find more work for you
• Benefits such as health insurance and paid time off (PTO) come at a cost, and sometimes they are negotiable
• Recruiters always make the job sound great

The Road Not Taken

The first phone call I received that week wasn’t for a technical writing job. It was for a web development job at the local newspaper. The job made sense. I had some newspaper experience and I knew HTML. They wanted somebody who could convert their articles into HTML using a conversion program that would probably require a few on-the-fly tweaks. They brought me in for a job interview and it went well. I met the editor in charge of the online edition and we liked each other instantly. He was a nerd, just like me. We prattled on about HTML for far longer than anyone should.

The downside was the pay. The job would be part-time (25 hours a week) and pay about twelve dollars an hour. That would be barely enough money to skirt bankruptcy, much less get ahead. Still, the job seemed well-suited to my skills and the journalist in me liked the idea of working for the largest daily newspaper in town. The editor promised to call me the next day and let me know whether or not I got the job.

A Bunch of Calls in a Row

I was still dressed in my suit when I got home and the phone rang. I was hoping it was the editor, calling me early, but it was another gig entirely. The company calling was Wesson, Taylor, Wells & Associates. They were a contracting agency out of North Carolina that specialized in placing programmers in the health care industry. They wanted to know if I could interview for a technical writing job that day. I still had my suit on, so I said sure, just tell me where to go. You don’t have to go anywhere, the man said, I’m going to have the head programmer call you in about ten minutes. Eight minutes later, I was talking to the head programmer.

Once again, the interview went well. The programmer wanted to know if I knew anything about Speedware. I answered honestly that I had never heard of it. How about Cobol? Sure, I told him. I knew a little about Cobol. It was a structured language used for building reports and such. Well, it turned out that Speedware was a lot like Cobol, a programming language I knew “a little” about. He asked if I could read Cobol. I told him I had programmed in Basic, Fortran and Assembly language. Reading code didn’t frighten me. Either my answers were good or they were desperate, because the next thing I knew I had an offer.

All the Work I Could Handle

Actually, I had two offers. While I was on the phone with the head programmer, the newspaper editor called (a day early) to offer me the web job. The recruiter for WTW simply had more to offer though. He could either pay me $20 an hour without benefits or $29,000 a year salary with benefits (paid medical, holidays, paid time off). If I took the $29,000 I would be considered a regular employee of WTW with a permanent job, even though I would be contracting for a local health insurance company. When this gig ended, he explained, they would find me another. It might not be in the same city, but if I moved I would get per diem, which is a daily (tax free) allowance to cover living expenses. In the meantime, if they hadn’t landed me a gig, I would be paid beach time. Beach time means that you keep getting paid even though you aren’t currently working on a contract. You could go to the beach if you wanted. He told me WTW had plenty of work to offer, and that I would probably be working steadily for years.

I took the full-time gig, and using the power of the other offer (without revealing the pay) I eventually negotiated the salary up to $35,000 with benefits. In addition, because I told him I might take the newspaper job as well (it would be nights) he offered to pay me to redesign the WTW web site, writing new web copy and creating a new visual look. Suddenly, I had all the work I could handle. I also had to fire up the fax machine…

Further Reading

• Evaluating a Job Offer by the US Department of Labor: Advice on researching a job or a company.
• Employee benefits by Wikipedia: A rundown of the general benefits that might be available for a job.
• How to Find Technical Writing Jobs by John Hewitt: My step-by-step guide to the process.

Questions

• Is money the primary consideration in a job search?
• If one job paid significantly less than another, what other factors might lead you to take the lower-paying job?
• What experiences have you had with job recruiters?

Next Time

I’ll discuss some of the things that happen after you take the job but before you actually start the job.

Wake Up and Smell the Technology

By Michael Bremer

I’d like all of you writers who consider yourselves too creative for technical writing to rethink your opinion. If you are creative, if you can entertain readers, if you like technology (even a little) and, above all, if you enjoy learning new things, then you’re the kind of writer that should be explaining our technical world to the people living in it.

How Technical Do You Have To Be To Be a Technical Writer?

The fact is, while there is a lot of technical writing that should be written by serious technologists, if not full engineers, that explain things to other technologists and engineers, the vast majority of writing about technology is written for and read by the nontechnical consumer audience.

How much of a technical background you need depends on what you write about. If you’re explaining APIs to programmers, then you need a programming background. If you’re explaining the theory of operation of a nuclear power plant to nuclear engineers, you need a physics background.

But if you’re explaining how to use a TV, VCR, home computer, or any of a million other hardware and software products created for the consumer market, you need a human background. And that’s what many writers who don’t normally consider writing about technology specialize in.

In fact, for many subjects and products, it’s an advantage for the writer to come to the project knowing very little. That way, the discovery process, complete with mistakes and false trails, is fresh in the mind, and you’ll know the pitfalls that your reader will face.

What Skills Do You Really Need?

To be a successful tech writer today, you do have to be able to:

• Learn: figure out what the darn thing is, what it does and how to use it.
• Explain: explain what you learned to people who don’t know it yet, who don’t figure things out as easily as you do or who don’t really enjoy learning new things.
• Write well: this is basic, and standard for all types of writing.
• Entertain: think back to your school days. Which teachers did you learn the most from? For me, it was the teachers that had a sense of humor and made learning fun and exciting.
  And the hardest of all:
• Finish: meet your deadlines with high quality work.

Technology Is Mass Market

As little as 15 years ago, technology was something that only engineers, scientists and propellerheads cared about. Sure, there were hi-fi enthusiasts, and there were those hobbyists who played with electronics and short-wave radios in the basement or garage, but these people, while tolerated, were a minority. They were generally considered strange, and were rarely invited to parties.

But today, everything is different. Technology is everywhere. Cell phones, VCRs, CDs, DVDs, computers and the Internet have invaded both home and workplace. Using technology is no longer a choice. It’s a fact of personal and professional life.

Technology Is Entertainment

People buy VCRs, camcorders, computers (at least partially) and software (at least partially) for entertainment. Learning how to use them should be entertaining as well. Why should they feel like they’re back in school with a boring, confusing, unclear teacher to learn how to have fun?

Learning is Necessary, But It Can Be Fun

Think back on your teachers who were boring and unclear. How much did you remember from their classes? Now think back on the few teachers who entertained and inspired you, who made you laugh now and then, whose classes were fun. As long as you have to learn, which teacher would you rather learn from? If you are teaching through your technical writing, which teacher would you rather be remembered as?

Rewards

Tech writing and technical communications in general is a growing field — growing in size and in prestige. With this growth comes more opportunities to be paid for writing, and pay rates are increasing, especially for those with a proven track record.

Today, the growth of the Internet and the software industry (business, entertainment, multimedia, etc.), and the ever-increasing need for more text and graphics, has created a need for writers and artists “well-paid writers and artists” like never before in the history of civilization. Today is your best opportunity to make a living as an artist, whether you work with words or images.

Beyond the financial aspects, there are other, less-tangible rewards from tech writing. Knowing that your work (your writing) helps other people to understand new things is rewarding in itself. And knowing that you make some people’s lives a little easier, even a little better, is something to be proud of.

With the right attitude and understanding, tech writing can give you the same personal and spiritual rewards as teaching (but with flexible hours and higher pay).

Summary

No matter what you have heard, what you have read, what you have believed, tech writing is not just for geeks any more. More and more (but far from all) companies are realizing the importance of documentation, and are changing their attitudes about creativity and humor.

So, try some tech writing. Learn something new and explain it to someone who needs help. Write so your reader will enjoy reading it. And above all, write things you enjoy writing.

Copyright 2000, Michael Bremer

About the author: Michael Bremer is the author of two books for writers: UnTechnical Writing: How to Write About Technical Subjects and Products So Anyone Can Understand, and The User Manual Manual: How to Research, Write, Test, Edit and Produce a Software Manual. He is also the managing editor of a new series of books for computer beginners: Advice From the Neighborhood Nerd. You’re not a dummy. You’re not an idiot. All you need is a little advice from the Neighborhood Nerd. For more information, see www.untechnicalpress.com.

Adobe FrameMaker for Technical Writers

Adobe FrameMaker is the Documentation Standard

Adobe FrameMaker is the industry standard for writing book-length technical documentation. It is a powerful program capable of creating books of well over a thousand pages. The learning curve for the program is significant. Adobe FrameMaker is a much different animal than Microsoft Word and other word processors.

It uses, not surprisingly, a frame system (pre-designed pages that text flows into) for creating pages. The user designs frames to apply to pages. Each frame can contain a combination of text and graphics. Those frames either operate as separate and distinct units or flow from page to page. Using these frames, the user sets up master pages and reference pages. These pages allow the user to create a standardized, but still very malleable, series of pages. The user can design a page to implement at the beginning of a chapter, for example, or design a page specifically for tables, graphs, or other graphics. Creating templates can be tedious, but once they are operational and you know the shortcuts, you can develop documents quickly.

Adobe FrameMaker versus Microsoft Word

In addition to the frames, another feature that separates Adobe FrameMaker from Word is its ability to create character formats, paragraph formats and implement variables. Microsoft Word has these capabilities, but they are much more limited than Adobe FrameMaker’s. More importantly, few Microsoft users have ever bothered to explore these higher functions and they remain quite buggy.

Adobe FrameMaker’s greatest feature is its bookmaker. The bookmaker allows you to develop different files around different functions. For example, you can have a file for the cover, for the front matter, for the table of contents, for each chapter, for the appendices, for the glossary and for the index. The bookmaker then keeps track of all these documents and makes sure they cooperate for such tasks as updating the table of contents and the index.

In my situation, the form of the pages was long ago set. I do not have to develop pages or frames from scratch. Unfortunately, many of the documents I will work with were written in the 1990s using Adobe FrameMaker 4. The current version of Adobe FrameMaker is 9, and many changes have occurred in the interface and the document handling. Because of that, I must subtly massage the documents to bring them into line with current standards. For example, there are some invalid fonts and minor formatting flaws that I have to look out for.

Additional Resources

• Adobe FrameMaker 9 Classroom in a Book
• Adventures with the New Technical Communication Suite from Adobe
• What’s new in FrameMaker 9

A Technical Writing Project Using Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Illustrator

Working with PDF Files

This week brought the first round of document editing. After spending last week looking for source files and confirming that at least thirty documents only have PDF files, I spent most of this week editing those PDF files.

PDF files are not intended for heavy editing. They are resistant even to light editing. In fact, one reason the company brought in a new contractor (me) was that none of the current staff were willing to attempt it. The rumor I have heard is that the contractor I replaced became “fed up” and he quit rather than take this assignment — good for him and better for me. I need the work and I do not mind the job.

Using Adobe Acrobat

As you probably know, you create PDF files using a program called Adobe Acrobat. There are some freeware translators out there that will turn a Word (or other) file into a PDF file, but Acrobat is the official program and it can turn just about any document into a PDF.

Using Acrobat, you can make minor edits to a PDF file, but Acrobat documents are very sensitive. Typing a single character can throw several lines off, destroy tables and cause all sort of other troubles. Alternately, it can be relatively uneventful and painless. You will not know until you type in that character.

Another problem with PDF files are embedded fonts. Because PDF files are meant to be read across platforms (Windows/Mac/Unix), many document publishers choose to embed particular fonts in order to ensure they get the desired look for their document. This means that the PDF file itself contains all the font information necessary to display and print that font, whether the viewer’s computer is equipped with that font or not. Normally, embedding fonts is a good idea, but it can make editing those documents (something you would normally never bother to do) complicated.

An important aspect of embedded fonts is that your computer will use the embedded font even if you have the identical font on your own computer. This means that, when editing, Acrobat may refuse to change or format a character because it uses an embedded font. You can work around these but the solutions are slow and tedious.

Using Adobe Illustrator to Edit PDF Files

One lesser-known solution to many of these problems is to use Adobe Illustrator to edit PDF files. Illustrator gives you much greater control over PDF pages and text formats. Illustrator has the ability to show individual blocks of text, which makes it clearer what you will change by typing something in. In Acrobat, you can only discover how much text is in a unit through trial and error. In addition, with Illustrator you can select a block of text and drag it to where you want it on the page (try doing that in Acrobat!).

The downside of Illustrator is that you can only load and edit one page of a PDF document at a time. Illustrator can also run into problems with embedded fonts. Its solution, however, is different from Acrobat’s response. Illustrator will replace an embedded font with a similar font. Unfortunately, the process tends to go smoothly only for letters and numbers. It goes less smoothly for punctuation marks, and very badly for special characters. Technical documents (and these documents in particular) have many special characters. I must frequently replace dozens of characters before I ever get to make the intended editorial changes to the documents. As I go through this process, I remind myself that the company pays me by the hour.

The changes, as I have indicated before, are minor. The company refined its manufacturing process and eliminated an outdated element across a wide platform of products. Due to the change, they have redefined package codes for those products. Because these are legacy documents, mostly dating 1994 to 1996, the products themselves are near the end of their lifecycle. Instead of inserting the new codes, I am changing the codes to a variable “x” so that (they hope) no future changes will need to be made. Some documents merely need a graphic (and the copyright info) updated and others require many small changes. I must, however, review each document must in detail to find these instances. The instances cannot be tracked solely through searches because many of the codes reside in graphics.

Technical Writing Jobs

This is not a job most technical writing books describe, but it is a common technical writing job. Not every job is about documenting new products or telling people how to accomplish things. Much of the work involves datasheets, specifications and reference guides. This is dull work even when you are creating the documents, and duller when you are merely updating them. This is also the sort of work that proves it is not always your writing skills that get you a job ? often it is your tools skills. Because I know how to use Acrobat, Illustrator and FrameMaker, I was a solid candidate for this job. Many of the jobs I have gotten came to me because I knew a certain set of development tools. Below is a core set of development tools every technical writer working today should know.

Adobe

• FrameMaker
• Acrobat
• Illustrator
• PhotoShop

Macromedia

• DreamWeaver
• Fireworks
• RoboHelp

Microsoft

• Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access)
• FrontPage
• Visio
• Project

Additional Resources

• Technical Writing 101: A Real-World Guide to Planning and Writing Technical Content
• What We Learn from Help Authoring Tool Surveys
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite 2

First Day of a Technical Writing Contract

Technical Writing Contract

Rule number one for a contractor is to never panic about what happens your first day. First days are naturally chaotic, and often companies are not fully prepared for you. Because contractors are usually brought in to solve a particular problem, the people are anxious to get you started, but companies, especially large ones, are not geared for quick action.

My first day starts at 5:45 in the morning. This is when I arrive to begin NCO (New Contractor Orientation). Most companies I’ve worked for don’t have anything like this, but this company is obsessed with safety. Every contractor who starts with the company must sit through at least the first part of the safety lectures and videos. Because I am working in an office and I do not work with hazardous chemicals (Except white-out and toner) I only have to attend until 10:00. Factory workers and clean room workers attend afternoon sessions as well.

The instructor for these safety lessons is a former naval officer who taught helicopter pilots how to survive a dunking, which is when a helicopter flips over upside-down into the ocean or other deep water. He speaks in the loud, staccato bursts you would associate with a drill sergeant, but is a nice guy who keeps the class moving. Because the company I’m working for does use many dangerous chemicals in its manufacturing process, there are many things even an office worker should know. Also, there is a lecture about harassment, sexual and otherwise. Over the course of the orientation, they process my paperwork and by the time I leave there I have a shiny new badge that will give me all the building access I need to do my job.

Technical Writing Orientation

After orientation I drive to the corporation’s other campus, where my daily job will be. It’s a huge campus with about ten big buildings. The building I work in has its own convenience store and cafeteria. One of the people I interviewed with comes down to meet me and gives me a short tour before heading to my cubicle. We go by the supply room and I pick up a notepad and a couple pens. After that, I write down the name and job function of everyone I meet. I have never been good with remembering names off the top of my head, and this gives me a reference that I can look back on later.

The first problem to emerge is the most typical. My computer is not ready yet and neither is my cubicle. They set me up at a temporary computer, but it doesn’t have the required software and nobody seems to have administration rights to the computer so we can’t install any new software either. There are about four key pieces of software I need to do my job, and the computer only has one of them. The problem is compounded because one of my bosses will be out of town all next week, and the other will only be in town on Monday and Friday.

While they scramble to solve the computer problem, I spend several hours looking over printouts of what I should be accessing online. I also read the company technical authoring guide; it goes over document formats, common product technical terms and includes a brief style guide. Many companies/departments don’t have one of these, so I consider is a good sign that this one does.

As the day progresses, I get moved to a small computer lab, where I can at least access the documents I need to read. My bosses also manage to procure for me the glossy marketing guides that have been produced for the products. One of the bosses immediately finds a technical flaw in their documents and brings it back to them.

Technical Writing Glitches

As the day winds down, my bosses figure out a basic solution to my computer problems that will, they hope, be put into place on Monday. Towards the end of the day I have one of my bosses sign my time sheet (Even though it was my first day, it was still a Friday) and I faxed it in to my contracting agency. Ten hours after I walked into the safety meeting I got to go home.

Overall it was a pretty typical first day. There will always be initial confusion, both for you and the company, and it is a good idea to take everything in stride. Just make sure you know four things by the end of the day: who your boss is, how to get in and out of the building, where the bathrooms are, and what the dress code is. If another week passes before they can get most of your problems fixed, then you can start to panic.

Additional Information

• Technical Writing Contract
• Technical Writer Hourly Rates and Salaries
• Hiring Contract Technical Writers

Technical Writing Interview and Negotiation

Technical Writing Job Interview

My face-to-face interview with the company was similar to my phone interview. So similar, in fact that more than once I found myself answering the same questions I had answered over the phone. They did throw a couple curve balls at me, however. The strangest question I was asked was, “If we called your references, what would they say about you?” I was unprepared for this one, and I ended up talking more about my references than about what they would say about me.

My basic statement, however, was one that I have used before. “Once I take on a project, I am very committed to it. I will fight for a project, often to the consternation of those around me.” This isn’t the most positive thing I can say about myself, but I don’t like to walk into an interview and give people a false impression either. I discussed how I handle situations. I told them I’ve camped in people’s cubicles to make them give me the information I need and I’ve gone to managers when I felt people weren’t cooperating. I told them that if they are looking for someone who is always tactful and compliant, I may not be right for their project.

Apparently they weren’t too scared off by my answers. They gave me two “take-home” tests (I could have done them there) to prove I knew what I was doing. The first was a general test of FrameMaker skills, and the second was an editing test. I found both tests to be pretty easy and I emailed the tests back the next morning. Less than an hour after I sent them the tests, I got a call telling me I was hired.

Technical Writing Contract Negotiation

I had already agreed on a rate for this job ($25 an hour) and so I was surprised when my recruiter called and said she wasn’t able to get me that rate. Just as I was about to panic, she revealed that they were actually going to pay me $30 an hour. Why did they raise it? I haven’t a clue. They had me at $25.

There were some contract negotiations, however. Most of the contract was fine except for clause 14:

Failure of the employee to report for work at the date, time and location above specified shall constitute a breach of this contract and the employee shall be SUBJECT TO LIQUIDATED DAMAGES IN THE SUM OF $5,000.00, payable to ____.

The clause is not as unreasonable as it seems at first. Once a consulting company commits to a contract, they assume a financial responsibility for that person showing up to work but there was no way I would agree to the contract unless the clause itself referred to a specific date and time when I was to show up. I “discussed” this with them over a series of phone calls that went all the way to the president of the consulting company and I finally got my way.

After that was settled, I signed the contract, a non-disclosure form, a criminal background check release, and direct deposit forms. Because the consulting firm is in Dallas, All of this had to be done long distance. There’s a good chance I will never meet my recruiter or account manager in person. This did create a problem at one point, when one of my faxed contract pages went missing and I had to go through my papers and fax the page again.

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