Documenter jobs?

betmatt has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm returning to Perl after a long period of absence. I know that there are better Perl programmers out in the wild. I wish to do freelance work. I was thinking that being a documenter of code would be a good way back in. Either documenting code that is in another language (German for example) or helping to make code easier to understand prior to the heavy weight programmers being sent in to improve the code. There is always the chance to contribute in a structured limited, managed way. Does anyone have any ideas? My English language is very good. Maybe there are programmers in India that would like to have a native English speaker document their code? Please buzz me if you do wish to have that.

Comment on Documenter jobs?

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Re: Documenter jobs? by footpad (Abbot) on Jul 11, 2019 at 23:05 UTC
It's an interesting idea. I don't know what the market would be for the services you're describing, but it's certainly a way to distinguish yourself from more traditional programmer/writers. Traditional documentation jobs involve creating references and conceptual content describing a project and there are a number of different tools you could use. Also, there are opportunities for so-called "glue" languages to help build documentation experiences. (I've used Perl, node.js, java, etc.) Perhaps you could put together a demo site showing the type of work you'd like to perform and the type of results you'd provide. (I've found a GitHub pages to be a relatively pain-free way to deploy such sites.) You might also consider signing up for sites like freelance.com, upwork.com, and so on. If you're also considering more traditional tech writer contracts, you might consider communities like https://www.writethedocs.org/, which runs a very active Slack channel, hosts job postings, and so on. Good luck! --f	[reply]

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Re: Documenter jobs?
by footpad (Abbot) on Jul 11, 2019 at 23:05 UTC

It's an interesting idea. I don't know what the market would be for the services you're describing, but it's certainly a way to distinguish yourself from more traditional programmer/writers.

Traditional documentation jobs involve creating references and conceptual content describing a project and there are a number of different tools you could use. Also, there are opportunities for so-called "glue" languages to help build documentation experiences. (I've used Perl, node.js, java, etc.)

Perhaps you could put together a demo site showing the type of work you'd like to perform and the type of results you'd provide. (I've found a GitHub pages to be a relatively pain-free way to deploy such sites.)

You might also consider signing up for sites like freelance.com, upwork.com, and so on. If you're also considering more traditional tech writer contracts, you might consider communities like https://www.writethedocs.org/, which runs a very active Slack channel, hosts job postings, and so on.

Good luck!

--f

[reply]