A really rewarding technical writing job! Guest Blog by Jennifer Zickerman, Documentation Wrangler at Mozilla

What do I do on the job? Mozilla is a highly global organization with employees and community members in almost every time zone and geographic location (even the Antarctica: http://mozilla-antarctica.org/.) While we have several offices, people also work from home, from coffee-shops and from shared workspaces. My group, the team that works on the Thunderbird email client, is about 12 people. We have about 20 million users. This works to about 1.6 million users per employee. This ratio is only possible because we are an open source company and focus on creating self-managing communities and contributors. As an example, I spend as much – sometimes more – time encouraging and enabling contributors as I do actually writing technical documentation. Because of the size of the project, I have to be strategic rather than specific. I try to find ways to re-use content; to encourage people who ask a question to post the answer in a way that it can help others; to make it easy for potential contributors to find tasks. The most delicate aspect of this work is striking a balance between personal contact and efficiency. We cannot build robust communities of happy contributors without personal contact, encouragement and gratitude.


About Mozilla

Mozilla is a non-profit open-source company that works for the good of the people who use the internet. We are a global community committed to an open, free, collaborative web where people are creators, not consumers, and where they have sovereignty over their privacy and their experience.

Mozilla was born in the early days of the web when various interests were trying to “own” the web. We are famous for our David-and-Goliath role in the “browser wars”, where we fought against a closed, monopolistic environment in favour of open data standards, protocols and laws that protect people's security, privacy and freedom of choice. The fight continues as the web moves to mobile devices, where history repeats itself as various players try to create monopolies by making incompatible platforms where users are locked in and have no choice.

Our flagship product is the Firefox web browser. We also make the Thunderbird email client, a variety of programming tools, and are deeply involved in the development of JavaScript and HTML5. We are building an open mobile web platform
(http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/b2g/). We are
active in education (http://www.hackasaurus.org and
http://p2pu.org/en/schools/school-of-webcraft/) , community building
(http://davidwboswell.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/who-is-in-the-mozilla-community/)
and media innovation
(http://www.knightfoundation.org/blogs/knightblog/2011/2/7/knight-and-mozilla-foundations-launch-partnership-to-advance-media-innovation/).


All of our activities are guided by the Mozilla Manifesto
(http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto.en.html), a document that
describes our commitment to the community of the internet.

Quest to discover the most rewarding technical writing jobs! A Guest Blog by Judy Holt, Technical Writer

As I progress through BCIT’s technical writing courses, I wonder what’s in store for me at the end of the certificate. I see many technical writing positions advertised, but wonder which of them would be most rewarding. I can’t help remembering negative comments by friends that technical writing must be ‘dry’ or ‘boring.’ I’m hoping to prove them wrong! So, what makes a job rewarding? Most people agree that it’s more important to enjoy your job and gain experience, than to earn lots of money—although that’s nice too! A 2007 survey on Job Satisfaction in the United States revealed that the most fulfilling careers involve helping others or being creative. This is good news, because don’t we do both as technical writers? Contrary to negative perceptions, it is only with a great deal of creativity that we can present complex information in ways that make sense to, and motivate, readers. While all this is promising, I’m no closer to finding out what types of technical writing are the most satisfying, and the web doesn’t offer much help. I found plenty websites confirming that technical writing is a good career choice, and read some interesting articles on the site I’d Rather Be Writing. However, in an unprecedented failure with a web search, I didn’t find a single article comparing different technical writing jobs. Did I miss some published articles? Or have I just found my first, real-world, technical writing project?!