What are you going to do with that? - Being a philosopher in IT
Disclaimer
This assignment was submitted as part of my Methods and Skills 2 seminar during my Research Master Programme at Radboud University Nijmegen. It has not been published by any official publishers, so here I publish it as a practice.
What are you going to do with that? - Being a philosopher in IT
‘Ohh, and what are you going to do with a philosophy degree?’ - this question probably sounds familiar for a lot of us, being asked sometimes mockingly, sometimes condescendingly at family gatherings or while getting to know new people. Most of the time everyone tends to look at philosophy as some marginal, generally useless subject. Now I will try to answer this question and argue against the general presupposition that philosophy cannot be valuable outside the philosophy departments, based on my general experience as a philosophy student ending up building my career in IT.
The usefulness of philosophy, in general (at least from a market value perspective), has been always up for questioning. However, my overall experience, besides my academic life, brought me to the conclusion that we philosophers, do have a lot to contribute to organizations, for example in the IT industry. In order to give my answer to the question above, I would like to introduce the term Technical Writing.
What is Technical Writing?
There are numerous definitions of the term, however, the easiest way to gain some general insight is to just google the term, and look for a definition online. Most of the results will give you a definition in accordance with this line of thought: technical writing is such a style of writing where the goal of writing is to give direction, instruction, or explanation.
There you have it! So, looking at it from this perspective, we can say that Technical Writers can operate in most of the industries running our economies, by being able to provide easy-to-understand instructional information, such as user manuals or tutorials.
Growing demand for writers
In what follows, I will restrict my focus only to IT, as this industry is my main field of expertise, and I have most of my experience in working with software. In general, IT businesses are constantly growing in number. What this means, is that the amount of information they produce is proportional to the age of the given companies.
However, without a clearly based structure for authoring, this information only builds up and generates noise. That’s where Technical Writers come into the picture, with their ability to manage, structure, and transform information into knowledge. If we take this and the continuously growing demand for writers, we can begin to see how philosophy majors can succeed in fields far from their main areas of expertise. But what are the skills we philosophy students have, that help us in such workplaces?
Skills you needed
In the following sections, I will quickly give a short list of the main skills I have been using as a Technical Writer.
Know how to write
It might seem obvious for a Technical Writer to know how to write, however, my first challenge, as a freshly graduated philosophy student starting in a Junior Technical Writer position, was to convert my academic style of writing. This wasn’t a difficult effort as academic writing is one of the most elaborate of writing styles, so I was confident about my successful switch because I knew I have all the skills it takes to write well.
For example, my ability to conduct research and write concisely about highly complex topic made me a perfect candidate for becoming a Technical Writer. This fact applies for all philosophy students, in my opinion, as a great part or our training is about how to deliver complex ideas for an audience on a lower level of expertise.
Although, there is an enormous difference between writing philosophy essays and user manuals, this only shows in the results but not in the process. In the first case, you have to explain your ideas and support the argument you make by referring to the literature. In the case of Technical Writing, you have to be more specific and use the least amount of words possible to convey your ideas, or instructions as clearly as the sun shines.
A great way to learn more about these differences is to look around your house and find some instructional pamphlets or cookbooks, check out the characteristics of such writings, and compare them to what you have been doing as a student. This way, by making such comparisons you can imagine what way to move forward concerning your writing style and what skills you already have, given you want to become a Technical Writer.
Know your audience
This point probably seems familiar for those pursuing a philosophy program. Writing to a general audience or for your supervisor has its own challenges. This goes for Technical Writing, too.
Understanding, and identifying the content needs of different audiences is what will make you a good Technical Writer. To gain such insight, ask the following questions as you write:
- Who are they?
- Why do they read this?
- What do they need?
By constantly re-evaluating your content, directed by the answers you found for these questions, you will create content that fits better the needs of your audience, either in terms of their level of expertise, or the task they have to complete.
Develop your technical skills
My next challenge on the way to become a Technical Writer was that I didn’t have any software knowledge, besides being an everyday user. To be able to help my readers comprehend extremely complex concepts or processes (e.g. the use of billing software), I had to develop in this respect.
Therefore, I took several programming courses online, my favorite ones are from freeCodeCamp.org, where you can get certified in the biggest fields of software development. And what’s more, the courses are completely free of charge!
I highly recommend taking some courses there (they often resemble some exercises from our logic classes), as it makes you more confident while you have to interrogate developers about some new feature they installed, that has to be documented. With this knowledge, you will be able to communicate more effectively and become the link between the experts and the pure layman.
Know how to do research
Researching a topic to write something about it is nothing new for philosophy students. However, it has to be emphasized as it is just as a vital skill for a Technical Writer as breathing.
As a Technical Writer, you will often find yourself in situations where there is not much to start with, and it’s up to you to formulate questions, find the answers to them (sometimes by reading through endless chains of emails or forum feeds, sometimes by personally looking for someone who can give you the answers), and present them in a way that matches the needs of your audience.
Know how to simplify complexity
This also won’t come as a surprise, as most of the time when you are doing your research about complex systems, you will find that the information is highly unstructured, as it comes from fragmented sources.
In order to be able to create a high-quality deliverable from this chaos, you have to be able to differentiate the types of information and match them to the different needs. If you have to explain some terms, it might be the best choice to write some conceptual description, in another case, if you have to present a task, maybe instructional information is what your audience needs.
Knowing terms for the categories of information you encounter, will make your research more efficient, and your writing more structured, simpler to understand. Which in turn, will make you a Technical Writer that stands out!
Summary
Technical Writing is one of the most demanded skills in the labor market. Some estimations say demand will grow 10% from 2014 to 2024. Therefore, it’s not in any way unreasonable to consider becoming a Technical Writer as a plan B for philosophers, especially that the skillset they have is what is needed for Technical Writers.
All in all, these were the skills I had to develop and practice a bit more to become successful in presenting highly complex information. For a last note, I would like to point out some good advice that could help you land your first job as a Technical Writer:
- Learn everything you can about trends and technologies: Attend webinars, read books and articles, take courses. This will make you up-to-date with all the recent developments and you will be able to give an appropriate reaction to them.
- Build a portfolio: This might sound a bit strange, as you’ve probably never written any technical text, but beginning to collect all the writings you have, and building a website for them will teach you not only how to be visible online, but also how to host a website, what type of website builders there are, etc. Also, you can find countless open-source projects on GitHub needing a Technical Writer, which can be a good addition to your portfolio.
- Reach out to others: Contacting other Technical Writers is one of the best ways to engage in constructive discussions, if you have doubts about your skills, or just have questions about different tools we use, just drop an email and we can show you around!
Additional resources
And to close off, here are some helpful resources if you would like to start your journey on the road towards Technical Writing. These were more than helpful when I had to find something to become better. Of course, this list is seriously incomplete, but Google is your best friend if you need some more material!