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iTunes2008 WritersUA Salary Survey Published: $76K Is Average
January 30th, 2008 | Posted in Technical Writing 5 Comments »
I read on Holly Harkness’s blog that the 2008 WritersUA Salary Survey has just been published. Holly writes,
The good news is that salaries in the United States now average $76,044, up over $2000 from last year. The bad news is the gender gap in compensation is alive and well. Men average $4000 more per year than women. WritersUA reports that the gap is growing, not shrinking.
For survey details, see the WritersUA salary survey home page. Here’s their graph of salary by location.
The market is great right now for technical communicators.
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Tags: salary, surveys, WritersUA
I wonder who they asked. I looked for tw jobs in the Northeast a few months ago and there was nothing that paid more than 60k. It must be the CA jobs that skew the average. If I could get 73k as a tech writer I’d quit my job today and do tech writing again.
Depends on your location. But if you’re locked into 60k and you have substantial experience and talent, consider upgrading to a better job.
That is why I switched over to software testing. It doesn’t necessarily pay better, but I had a bigger choice of offers that I reasonably could get.
I also think that tech writer is a broad term. I am experienced in software development and help authoring, but have little to no experience with CAD for example. Some jobs require that the tech writer creates explosion drawings on his/her own from the engineering CAD files.
I still think the average doesn’t apply to most places in the US.
It’s hard to talk about this subject without disclosing salaries.
I cringe at the mention of gender salary gap. In every case where I have seen actual salaries for men and women, they are the same. Come on, human resource departments are quite commonly run by females and they’d be the ones implementing the inequities. I do see females going after lower paying roles more often then men and it is also speculated that men negotiate salary more forcefully.
Overall, it’s good news to see average salaries moving up in general.