
Ask HN: Getting into Development from Marketing? - 35mm
I have a marketing background and enjoy programming. Mostly I’ve built small web apps, for example a site that scrapes Kickstarter and generates a nice looking gallery of the videos from campaigns which exceeded their funding goal - the idea being to showcase Kickstarter videos which are likely good &#x2F; effective.<p>I also like making scripts to automate boring things, for example I’m writing a Buffer clone to schedule content uploads to my client’s CRM (which doesn’t have such a feature built in).<p>I’m starting to enjoy these projects more than the actual work I’m doing.<p>Is there a good route into getting a job? What area would you recommend?<p>Most of the projects I’ve been doing involve a little bit of back-end (Django), web scraping (Selenium, Python, Chrome Webdriver), and front end (React, Meteor).
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strongbond
You could be me! I was in a similar position but could not afford the salary
decrease (however temporary) from senior marketer to junior developer. So I
segued into technical writing from marketing - my salary dropped a little but
there were a fair number of transferrable skills, plus an enjoyment of
programming, so it was reasonably smooth. Fast forward 15 years - I am now a
senior technical writer but can't afford the salary drop to junior developer!
Hey ho, I get my fair share of coding in my day job and the pleasure of
helping people get intimate with software. Good luck!

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35mm
Thanks, really appreciate the response!

What would you recommend I read / watch / do if I want to learn about
technical writing?

P.S I remember that Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance was a technical writer in his dayjob.

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strongbond
Yeah, I knew about Mr. Pirsig and I've always loved the book.

Depends how impatient you are - or perhaps more accurately, how your financial
situation is. Because of my marketing background, I started off with a large
company (CSC Computer Sciences as it was then) working with a team that was
launching a large collection of 'service offerings' \- so the writing, while
it had to be accurate and truthful, focused on upbeat, marketing-style
messaging. It took me 5 years - including some time as a freelancer - before I
began to get regular gigs in my target zone - you know, bringing complex
software to life for a readership that was largely composed of developers. If
I was doing it again ... and to get into that zone a bit quicker ... I would
definitely look at the open source world and offer to help with some projects
that gave me some tingles. There are many, many wonderful open source projects
that owe their success to great docs (e.g. DJango) and in the closed source
world, orgs like Stripe are very well regarded.

I always took two sayings to heart:

1\. You need to write a million words before you can call yourself a writer -
both Ray Bradbury and Jerry Pournelle are cited as sources.

2\. All writing is rewriting. That is, your first draft will be garbage but
it's easier to improve on something that you have, than to start with a blank
page.

Both quotes have been more often attributed to writing fiction, but the same
goes in the tech writing world.

The other important thing to understand is that tech writing is much less
glamorous than development, and so it's often harder to fill those slots,
which gives you an edge if you can demonstrate a bit of ability.

One option you might consider is simply to apply for those jobs. If you know
programming, that's a huge plus. If you don't have a portfolio - urge the
hiring company to set you a tech writing task (that's what I did). You can
only learn from the exercise. Sure, you might bomb a couple of times, but
there will come a time when you don't.

You don't really get much from books until you're into the groove - tech
writing is really just about 'doing it' while keeping an authentic picture of
your reader in your mind.

Hit me up (I'll put my email in my profile) if you have any other questions.

[Edit]: for presentation and a typo

