Trends survey

Trends intrigue me in part because I want to avoid obsolescence in the market (e.g., becoming Blackberry or Blockbuster) due to shifting technologies.
I find that UX designers are often champions of better writing in user interfaces, and they often include me in shaping UI text.
The number of engineers I support seems to be growing each year, making the ratio of tech writers to engineers more lopsided (with fewer tech writers and more engineers).
Subject matter familiarity is a key requirement in a lot of the tech comm jobs I've looked at. It seems employers often want me to know X, Y, and Z technologies already from the start.
My generalist skills give me more mobility in the job market, allowing me to pivot across many different types of tech comm careers (from UX copywriter to social media manager to technical editor to elearning developer and more). In this sense, being a generalist gives me a career advantage.
If I were a hiring manager (hiring for a technical writer role) and choosing between someone with (1) strong tech knowledge but mediocre writing skills, or (2) someone with strong writing skills but mediocre tech knowledge, I would usually choose the candidate with strong tech knowledge (#1).
Tech comm professionals hybridize their job titles (e.g., "technical writer/content strategist") because writing alone seems to be a low-value skill that needs to be supplemented with more specialized sizzle.
People generally assume that writing involves wordsmithing, style, and grammar -- not much more (at least not much analytical/intellectual thought or strategy).
The growing complexity in the technology landscape is ratcheting up the value of technical knowledge in organizations (making it more prized than writing skills). In other words, because technology is getting so specialized, people who possess this specialized knowledge are more valuable within organizations.
It's harder to keep up with technology today than it was a decade ago. I often feel like I'm drowning in everything I need to know and learn.
If you're going to write documentation for developers or other specialists, you pretty much need an engineering background.
Specializing the writing process -- by having engineers create content while tech writers make the information usable/readable -- is a direction we're heading in tech comm.
Engineers are good at writing reference information and code comments but not so good at conceptual or tutorial information.
Documentation processes are moving towards docs-as-code tools in part because engineers are more involved in the authoring processes, and they prefer to use tools they're familiar with.
Creating documentation is becoming more of a collaborative effort with engineers due to the increasing level of complexity and specialization in the technology landscape.
I know how to work well with engineers in content development efforts, even when I'm playing more of an editorial role.
Your analysis of tech comm trends in this post captures ideas and practices that are extremely important to me. 
If desired, feel free to share any comments about this article that will help me better understand the trends I've written about. Thanks for taking this survey.
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