Latest / The Career Change Podcast with Fexingo: Switching Fields, Bootcamps, and Reskilling / How Bootcamp Grads Can Transition Into Technical Writing
Transcript
- Lucas: You finish a coding bootcamp. You can build a full-stack app. You can explain async JavaScript to a friend over coffee. But every job posting you see wants two years of experience and a CS degree. So you start wondering — is there a tech role where my ability to explain things clearly is actually the main skill, not just a nice to have? Luna: That sounds like the exact moment a lot of bootcamp grads discover technical writing. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a path that gets surprisingly little attention. We've done episodes on DevOps, data engineering, product management — but not this one. So let's fix that. I want to look at one person's story: Maria Chen. She finished a twelve-week JavaScript bootcamp in early 2025, and within eight months she had a technical writer role at Stripe. Luna: Wait — Stripe? As in the payments company? I thought they mostly hired senior engineers. Lucas: They hire plenty of engineers, but Stripe also has a large documentation team. Their API is used by millions of developers. Someone has to write the guides, the reference docs, the migration notes. Maria's background was actually in journalism before the bootcamp — she'd covered local politics for a small paper. She learned to code, but what she really brought was the ability to take a complex process and make it readable. Luna: So the bootcamp gave her the technical vocabulary, and the journalism background gave her the writing discipline. That's a pretty powerful combo. Lucas: It is. And the thing is, you don't even need a journalism degree. What you need is a portfolio that shows you can write about technical things clearly. Maria's portfolio had three pieces: a beginner's guide to setting up a local development environment, a comparison of JavaScript frameworks for a fictional e-commerce app, and a short tutorial on using the Stripe API to process payments — which she actually wrote by reading Stripe's existing docs and then rewriting a section in her own words. Luna: She essentially reverse-engineered their documentation to demonstrate she could write for them. That's smart. Lucas: And it's exactly the kind of initiative hiring managers in technical writing look for. Because unlike a software engineering interview where you might get a leetcode problem, a technical writing interview is often a take-home assignment: here's a feature, write the documentation for it. Maria had already proven she could do that. Luna: What about the numbers? What does a role like that actually pay? Lucas: The Society for Technical Communication publishes an annual salary survey. Their most recent data — from 2025 — puts the median salary for a technical writer in the U.S. at about ninety-five thousand dollars. Entry-level roles start around sixty-five to seventy-five thousand. Senior roles, especially at companies like Stripe, Twilio, or Shopify, can go well over one hundred thirty thousand. Luna: And that's for a role that doesn't require you to be on call at 2 a.m. when production goes down. Lucas: Right. No pager duty. No sprint commitments that keep you up at night. The rhythm is different — you're working with product managers, engineers, and support teams to figure out what users need to know, then writing it. It's collaborative, but the output is prose and code examples. Luna: Let's talk about the skills specifically. What does a bootcamp grad already have that's relevant? Lucas: First, they can read code. That's huge. A lot of people who apply for technical writing jobs have English degrees and can write beautifully, but they freeze when they see a function signature. Bootcamp grads have spent months reading code, debugging it, writing it. They can look at an API endpoint and understand what it does. Second, they know the pain of bad documentation — every bootcamp student has cursed a tutorial that assumed too much knowledge. That empathy is valuable. Luna: And they've probably already written some documentation themselves. Most bootcamps require a final project with a README, and often a short demo script or a blog post explaining the project. Lucas: Exactly. That's a portfolio piece right there. The mistake people make is thinking they need ten perfect samples. You really need three strong ones: one tutorial, one reference-style piece — like a function reference — and one conceptual overview. Put them on a simple site, maybe GitHub Pages, and you're ready to apply. Luna: You mentioned Twilio and Shopify. Do they have dedicated documentation teams? Lucas: Twilio has a whole team called Developer Experience, which includes technical writers, developer advocates, and education engineers. Shopify has a similar group. And both companies explicitly value writers who can code. In fact, Twilio's job postings for technical writers often list 'experience with a scripting language like Python or JavaScript' as a requirement. That's a direct fit for bootcamp grads. Luna: So the bootcamp credential alone isn't a barrier. It's more about demonstrating the combination of skills. Lucas: Exactly. I want to be realistic, though. Not every bootcamp grad will land at Stripe or Twilio. But there are thousands of mid-sized companies that build SaaS products and need someone to write their API docs, their integration guides, their release notes. The market is actually growing because more companies are adopting what's called 'docs as code' — treating documentation like software, with version control, pull requests, and automated builds. Luna: And that workflow — Git, markdown, static site generators — is something bootcamp grads already know from their projects. Lucas: Right. Jekyll, Hugo, Docusaurus — those are tools technical writers use every day. A bootcamp grad who built a portfolio site with one of those has a head start. Luna: This is genuinely helpful. I think a lot of listeners who are six months out of a bootcamp and striking out on engineering applications might not have considered this as a plan B. Lucas: And it's not really plan B. It's a different path that leverages a different set of strengths. If you're the person in your study group who always ended up writing the README or explaining the concept to others, this might actually be plan A. Luna: So if someone wants to explore this further, what's the first step? Lucas: Pick an API you use regularly — maybe the Stripe API, or the GitHub API, or the Twilio API — and write a guide for a specific task that doesn't already have great documentation. Or rewrite a section you find confusing. Then share it on GitHub and LinkedIn. That shows initiative and skill. And there's a community called Write the Docs that has a Slack group, conferences, and mentoring. It's very welcoming to newcomers. Luna: I love that. One concrete action. And you can do it this weekend. Lucas: You really can. And if today was actually useful to you — if it helped you see a path you hadn't considered — the way these episodes stay ad-free is listener support. You can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, no perks, just a way to keep this show free for everyone. Luna: Yeah, it's a small gesture that makes a big difference. We appreciate everyone who helps keep the conversation going. Lucas: Alright, back to it. One thing I want to clarify: technical writing is not the same as UX writing. UX writing is about the microcopy inside a product — button labels, error messages, empty states. Technical writing is about longer-form documentation, API references, tutorials, and guides. Both are legitimate careers, but they require slightly different portfolios. Luna: Can someone do both? Lucas: Absolutely. And many companies have both roles. But when you're starting out, it helps to focus on one. If your background is more writing and less design, lean into technical writing. If you have a good sense of interaction design and user flows, lean into UX writing. Luna: What about the interview process? Is it very different from engineering interviews? Lucas: Completely. No whiteboarding algorithms. Instead, you'll get a writing assignment — usually a take-home that takes a few hours. They might give you a feature description and ask you to write the documentation. Or they might give you a piece of existing documentation and ask you to critique and improve it. Then there's usually a panel review where you discuss your decisions. Luna: That sounds almost easier for someone who's more comfortable with prose than with algorithms under pressure. Lucas: It is. And the feedback loop is faster. You submit the assignment, they review it, you talk through it. There's no 'compile and hope' moment. Luna: What about contract versus full-time? I've heard technical writing has a lot of contract work. Lucas: It does. Early in your career, contracts can be a great way to build a portfolio and get experience. But many companies convert contractors to full-time after six to twelve months. And the contract rates are often higher to compensate for the lack of benefits. I've seen rates around fifty to seventy-five dollars an hour for experienced contractors. Luna: That's solid. Especially if you're working remotely. Lucas: Exactly. And remote is very common in this field. Documentation teams are often distributed because the work is asynchronous. You write, you review pull requests, you chat in Slack. As long as you have a good internet connection, you can be anywhere. Luna: So for a bootcamp grad who maybe lives in a smaller city without a big tech scene, this could be a way in. Lucas: One hundred percent. And I think that's the real takeaway here. The bootcamp gives you the technical foundation. The question is what you build on top of it. If the standard engineering track isn't clicking, there are other roles that value your skills just as much — and technical writing is one of the most underrated. Luna: Underrated and growing. I checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics before this episode — they project employment for technical writers to grow about seven percent through 2033, faster than average. Lucas: And that's probably conservative given how many companies are now shipping APIs and needing documentation. I think the real growth is higher. Luna: Alright, so concrete next steps: pick an API, write a guide, share it, and join Write the Docs. Anything else? Lucas: Go to the Society for Technical Communication website — they have a job board and salary data. And read a book called 'Every Page Is Page One' by Mark Baker. It's the best introduction to topic-based technical writing. Luna: That's a great recommendation. I'll add it to the show notes. Thanks, Lucas. Lucas: Thanks, Luna. And to everyone listening — if you've been stuck in the job hunt, consider this path. It might be the one that fits.