How I became a solo technical writer

If “figure it out” was a person, that would be me

In my career, I’ve had four major career transitions. But my early career taught me a skill that shows up in my work every single day.

I remember my first day as a Technical Writer. I was so excited to work with my manager. But on that very first day, I learned she was leaving in three weeks. I’d be a solo technical writer.

At first, I panicked. Boy, here I was so excited to learn from my new manager, and now I’d own the full documentation lifecycle for multiple products from creation to continuous improvement while onboarding.

Building my own support system

As someone who figures things out and finds solutions, I sat down with my manager to ask what was the most important work for the next few weeks. I set up calls with the key stakeholders. And since testing was a big part of the product, I built strong relationships with the QA teams. This helped a lot because I always knew what was coming ahead of time and learned to test features independently to validate documentation early on.

I ended up staying for a year in that role and learned so much. But what also helped was community. I reached out to Kat and Rachel at the time, and they shared tips on how I should approach things.

From panic to my biggest shift

What started as chaos became my biggest shift. There are lots of people I can give shoutouts to:

• Francesca Cook, who took a chance on me
• Kiko and his QA team, who made it all easy for me to catch up
• Kat Stoica Ostenfeld and Rachel Rigdon, fellow technical writers who shared tips on how to navigate my journey

Sometimes the best growth happens when you have no choice but to figure it out. Being thrown into the deep end taught me to build relationships fast, use community wisdom, trust that I could handle more than I thought possible, and approach complex challenges at work with curiosity.