I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson

Gigzig is a feature within Payscale.com that shows you where people with your same job title were 5 years ago, and where they are 5 years from now. It’s a pretty cool before-and-after path to look at.

The technical writing path is particularly interesting to follow. It seems that in five years, most tech writers either become managers or move elsewhere into IT.

Gigzig explains how the arrive at this data:

Every day many thousands of people visit PayScale and take our compensation survey to compare their pay anonymously with their peers and improve their understanding of the job market. As part of this process, users are asked what was their job 5 years ago. GigZig provides an interesting and very useful view on this information.

Knowing what everyone who had a job 5 years ago did, along with what they do now, gives unprecedented insight into what career choices people are making. Combine this with PayScale’s world class compensation data, and you now know how much of a pay difference each of these career choices can make for you.