S22:E6 - Technical writing (Philip Kiely)

Saron sits down with writer, programmer, and creator, Philip Kiley. Philip is the author of Writing for Software Developers and Life-Changing Email. They discuss how he first got into technical writing while studying abroad in Budapest, what technical writing is, what technical content platforms are out there, why new developers should publish content early in their careers, and more. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Coding TikTok Technical writing GitHub AIT-Budapest Life-Changing Email Writing for Software Developers

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[00:00:05] SY: Welcome to the CodeNewbie Podcast where we talk to people on their coding journey in hopes of helping you on yours. I’m your host, Saron, and today we’re talking about technical writing with Philip Kiely, an author and technical writer.

[00:00:19] PK: There’s this idea that stuck with me for a long time, the idea of a yellow belt mindset where a yellow belt is the second lowest rank in martial arts, that means that you have so much to learn, but it’s the second lowest rank. So you’ve also taken a step, and that means you have something to teach because there’s people who haven’t taken that step yet, and it’s your responsibility to help them take that step in the same way that other people helped you.

[00:00:45] SY: Philip talks about how he first got into technical writing while studying abroad in Budapest, what technical writing is, what technical content platforms are out there, and why new developers should publish content early in their careers after this.

[MUSIC BREAK]

[00:01:06] SY: Thank you so much for being here.

[00:01:07] PK: Thank you for having me.

[00:01:08] SY: Yeah. So let’s start with the beginning. Why coding? What was the interest in that?

[00:01:14] PK: So I started a computer science major in my first year of college because it’s what my friends were doing. So it’s a good thing that my friends were interested in something as awesome as computer science.

[00:01:24] SY: Yeah.

[00:01:25] PK: And not like underwater basket weaving or I might have been on a very different trajectory.

[00:01:29] SY: Right. I love that. I love that you made that decision from your associations, from your peers. Sounds like that’s kind of worked out for you.

[00:01:35] PK: Yeah. Well, what happened is I got invited to this hackathon by a couple of guys who I had just started playing D&D with. And we went to this warehouse in Ames, Iowa, in the middle of a snowstorm and sat around coding for three days and I had a great time and I haven’t really looked back since.

[00:01:53] SY: So I know that part of your education was a study abroad trip to Budapest. Can you tell me a little bit about that and what influence that had on your coding career?

[00:02:03] PK: Sure. So I just really wanted to learn how to be a better software engineer because this was early on, so I didn’t really have a lot of the skills and confidence to participate in the industry in the way that I wanted. So I picked this program in Budapest called AIT that sounded perfect because it was all about computer science classes at a liberal arts school, like the one I went to. You took maybe one or two computer science classes per semester. And in this program, I was able to take 22 credits of just computer science.

[00:02:38] SY: Wow!

[00:02:39] PK: So when I was there, I was able to pick up a lot of new disciplines. I learned all about cryptography, I learned about mobile development, and that gave me a much lot of appreciation for what was possible, and it’s also where I discovered technical writing.

[00:02:58] SY: Tell me more about that technical writing discovery. How’d that come about?

[00:03:02] PK: Sure. So there was one class that I had to take for the requirements of the program that was like a Hungarian language class. I’ll admit I wasn’t paying very much attention and I started looking around on the internet and I’m honestly not sure how I found this, but I found this business and they were in the technical mentorship business and they had this platform that they had aimed at the German market that they were bringing to the American or the English-speaking market. And I saw the copy and it kind of looked like you’d run it through Google Translate. There was a lot of stuff that wasn’t super idiomatic in it. And I sent them a cold email and I said, “Hey, I noticed the site that you’re trying to bring to this new audience, and I don’t think that right now it looks very trustworthy because of all of these mistakes. I can write pretty decently and I can understand where to put the new strings in your code. So if you just send me your GitHub, I’ll put it in there for you, and then you’ll be able to get more customer.” And they were like, “Absolutely.” They paid me $500 for that, which was mind blowing. That was so cool. That was a whole month of rent in Budapest.

[00:04:15] SY: Yeah, that is so cool. Nice.

[00:04:18] PK: Then those same people said, “Hey, we have this blog that we’re trying to use to get some more attention and get some more customers and whatnot. Would you want to write some technical tutorials for that?” And I was like, “Absolutely. I would love to.” And I realized, “Hang on. If these people are willing to pay me for this thing, maybe other people will too.” And so in that same semester, I figured out that there was this place called FloydHub that was also looking for technical content. And so I wrote for them and then I used that to build my portfolio until I could write for Smashing Magazine. And I used that to build my portfolio until I could write for anyone whose email address I could find.

[00:05:02] SY: So what was it about technical writing that kept you going? It sounds like partly it was decent pay. It’s great to have your rent covered by your writing. That’s unheard of for a lot of people. That’s amazing. But was there anything else about it that made you kind of keep coming back to it and wanting to build that portfolio and write for Smashing in all these other places?

[00:05:21] PK: Yeah. So I come from a family of writers and a lot of my friends at this college that I went to were writers or literary in some way, and so I had definitely seen firsthand how difficult it is to get started in any type of writing. I had heard all the stories and read the Stephen King on writing book where he talks about how he has this whole mail full of all of his rejection letters from when it took him dozens and dozens of times to try and get published. And I got published on my first try and my second try and my third try. And I’m not a better writer than Stephen King, but I can code. And even as a junior in college, with only two internships at random insurance companies in the Midwest under my belt, I could code well enough to do some personal projects and use the information from those projects to write articles. And unlike my peers who were trying to get published in small journals or local magazines, and oftentimes getting rejected, I realized that because of this niche that I’d chosen, I could jump right to the best publications in the industry and get published right away. And so compared to the journey as a writer, basically anywhere else, tech seemed amazing. And so I went for it. And then on the other side, as a programmer, I think I’m a pretty okay programmer, but I know a lot of programmers who are way better than I am. But most of them don’t want to wait. So just realizing that I had these two skills, either one of which I’m nowhere near the best in the world at, if I put them together, then I could actually be competitive in these top markets.

[00:07:08] SY: And what was the plan with all this technical writing? Were you planning on being a writer as a profession? Were you trying to leverage it to get into a coding job? What was kind of the plan with all this technical writing?

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