It’s no news that tech is booming. And it’s going to be like that for the foreseeable future. Are you going to let it slide without taking a piece of the pie?
Many people believe you have to be a software developer to be considered a tech person. That’s not true. There are several areas in tech that don’t require you to write code. In this article, I’ll explain some of them and how you can get started today.
Technical Writing
Technical writing is an integral part of tech. Any technology created without documentation will be unusable. Someone has to do the job of creating content and managing content about a particular innovation.
According to the US Bureau of Statistics, the median salary for a technical writer is about $74,650 per year and $35.89 per hour.
But what do technical writers do?
Technical writers create instructional manuals, articles, how-to guides, graphics, and any form of documentation that communicates complex and deeply technical information in an easily digestible format.
How do you get started with technical writing
Normally, most technical writing jobs require a college degree but things have changed. There is more emphasis on what you can do nowadays compared to what degree you have. So, you need to be good at writing technical content and you need to show it.
- Learn to explain complex concepts with simple and correct English constructs, examples, and everything that will make your content enjoyable.
- Take a free technical writing course with Google or take one from Coursera or Udemy
- Start writing and putting yourself out there. Share your content with friends and build a cult following
- You can start as a freelancer or start applying for jobs. But only do this after you have written enough content and put stuff out there for free to validate your skills.
Product design
Even if you have not tried to design anything before in your life, with consistent practice and dedication you can become a product designer in a couple of months and build a business or get a job.
In fact, according to Glassdoor, the national average salary for a Product Designer is $105,448 per year in the United States.
So, what does a product designer do?
If you Google what a product designer does you’ll see a lot of “long stories”, well. I’ll make it easy. A product designer takes a product specification and creates a prototype design of what the end product should look like.
Other processes lead to this end goal. But to give you an idea, this is exactly what you’ll be required of as a product designer. You might need to learn UI/UX design and a lot of theories and practicals around designs as well to be a better product designer.
And you can start today by taking the free Udacity Nano Degree course on Product Design and UI/UX design and I recommend you subscribe to this Youtube Channel “Building Amazing things on YouTube” to get a quick and in-depth overview and practical examples of what it looks like to work as a UI/UX or a product designer.
Project/product management
If you have managerial skills, it’ll be a good idea to explore project management in tech and also, you can start as a complete beginner. Here your role will be to manage — plan, execute, monitor, control, and close out projects for a team or an organization.
According to Indeed, the average salary for a project manager is $74,124 per year in the United States and sometimes with a $13,500 cash bonus per year.
You could kick start your journey into project management by taking a free diploma course on Project Management on Alison.com
Sofware tester
You don’t need to be a programmer to be able to test software. They are different ways to test software, Unit testing, End to End testing, Integration testing, etc. You can start your journey to software testing by becoming a manual tester. As a manual tester, you’ll test every part of software features to ensure that they are working based on the specification.
Since most testing jobs require you to have at least the knowledge of quality assurance, I’ll recommend you start by taking one or two courses on Udemy about Testing and Quality assurance.
Podcasting / Youtube
Creating amazing content can never go out of style. If you enjoy making videos or having conversations you can start a podcast/YouTube channel focused on featuring tech people. This will attract tech people to your channel and of course, you can benefit from the ad revenue that comes with it.
The good thing about getting started is that once you get started, you’ll find a part that seems very interesting for you and you’ll find connections and ways to be even more valuable and successful. So, I’ll advise that you take your time and get started with one. Don’t overthink or complicate things. Get started right away.
Good luck.
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