I love the opportunity to feel smart.

I love sitting in a meeting asking questions that gradually help the engineers to clarify their product vision.

I love discovering bugs that nobody else found, or being the first to suggest a really cool new feature.

I love sitting down at the first product meeting and feeling like everyone is speaking a foreign language because the product is so complicated or the technology is so new, and then the process of breaking down this thing that's impossible to understand into something anybody can understand.

I love the process of coming into a team that thinks they don't need a tech writer and showing them why they do and why I in particular am such a value-add.

I just really love being a tech writer.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

I'd like to quote part of my results from the Clifton StrengthsFinder test because I feel it accurate depicts what thrills me about being a Tech Writer. According to the CSF, my top three strengths are Input, Communication, and Learner.

So, these are the things I love about Tech Comm: the ability to use my greatest strengths. This job allows me to collect ideas, to learn new things, and to communicate them to others. I couldn't have found a more perfect career if I'd planned it this way! For more about the CSF see the book "Now, Discover Your Strengths" by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

Many people who are involved in TW find that developing and using some special knowledge or talent to be quite satisfying. Here is an example from another industry: A computer programmer might enjoy applying specially-developed talents to the job. And this kind of work would not necessarily involve such a thing as creating a tutorial for many others to use, or some other reference thing, the product of the work may well (and probably will be) be incorporated into a larger piece of work that uses other expertise that was developed from other people.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

One big thing that I find very satisfying about TW and Technical Communication is that the work involves pulling together facts, source material, and reference material to create a professionally-packaged thing that communicates and that answers questions that people have. I think that many people who are involved in creating communication products find this satisfying too.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

My current gig pays much less, but it's out in the country (where I choose to be for now). It's a career that's easy to move around and pays well enough that I can enjoy living in a different area for several months at a time -- and three-to-six-month projects are relatively easy to find. New Jersey salaries are usually about three times the salaries of upstate NY. Money is more about geography than skillset. In most cases, heavy lifting is kept to a minimum and I can save my sweating for the gym -- and can afford a good one. No matter how actively my day might be sucking at any given moment, I'm in a private, climate-controlled office, sitting in an ergonomic chair, writing for a living. Having done jobs ranging from EMT to short-order cook in the past, I do appreciate a pleasant (and appropriately cooled or heated) working environment.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

We make [the amount of money] we make, and we don't have to worry about stopping a SME in the hallway (for a broken command line at 2am) and eating a 45 slug, running into a burning building for a document review, or confronting 45 inner-city developers for a training session and having one of them throw us out a 4th floor window. Yet most of us make substantially more than most of them.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

What we do is very "results oriented". I'm producing something tangible, and that's very satisfying.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

I'm one of the first to get the "new toys" out of engineering :) (and it's *so* fun to break things!)

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

Primarily the variety. I love that there's always something new to learn. It could be software for doing my job. It could be hardware or software that I need to document. It could be a totally new skill like drawing using a computer (not easy when you're not much of an artist to begin with!). The variety isn't necessarily what drew me to tech writing, but it's what's kept me here and made me realize that I chose the right career. I am always learning something new.

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.

It fills the needs of my creative side (which can be a downside, actually, since I don't do enough of the real creative stuff outside work!)

Posted by Lisa Gielczyk, TCP Administrator, during conversion to Drupal.