5 ms·
Help Wanted at LWN
- easytiger 3y ago[flagged]
- sigzero 3y agoThere is nothing wrong with that requirement. Also "or equivalent experience".
- c0balt 3y agoThat's a bit misquoted, the full quote: > A university degree in technical writing, engineering, or the sciences, or equivalent experience. , which , to be fair, doesn't sound that unusual. Though I'd like to see which university offers a degree in technical writing.
- homarp 3y ago>Though I'd like to see which university offers a degree in technical writing. https://cla.umn.edu/writing-studies/undergraduate/major-and-minor/bs-technical-writing-communication https://cla.umn.edu/writing-studies/undergraduate/major-and-... https://english.arizona.edu/bachelor-arts-professional-and-technical-writing https://english.arizona.edu/bachelor-arts-professional-and-t...
- fsckboy 3y agohttps://english.arizona.edu/bachelor-arts-professional-and-technical-writing https://english.arizona.edu/bachelor-arts-professional-and-t... that's one of many from a simple search. but, any English expository writing program would allow you to focus on a particular industry if you wanted, just pick your electives, term paper topics, etc. and no doubt if you're clever you could get approval for joint work in another department.
- a_techwriter_00 3y agoOne example is a little-known disreputable degree mill called Carnegie Mellon University
- quickthrower2 3y agoWow, that is fairly well paid, given it is fully remote, as well as being a fantastic sounding job.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoYeah, it's an extremely attractive position. I wonder which fields comprise "the sciences".
- freedomben 3y agoI don't know for LWN, but in software engineering in general, especially the type of engineers who are deeply interested in the kernel, the sciences means something like a bachelor of science in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, physics, chemical engineering, or other degrees with a fair level of math.
- JeremyNT 3y agoThey also mention "equivalent experience" so I'd imagine that isn't a hard requirement. Up to 140k as a technical writer sounds pretty amazing, although I imagine LWN is the "major leagues" of tech writing so this is probably a bit of an outlier in that field. I actually have an English degree and briefly considered tech writing as an option earlier in my career, but at the time it was far easier to find a career path in Sysadmin/Webmaster/Developer roles, and I've sadly never been able to use my writing skills professionally (outside of issues and emails, of course!)
- orochimaaru 3y agoHave you posted in the who’s hiring section? But that sounds pretty cool.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoI am wondering why python development experience is a major bullet point. Does LWN have a lot of in-house code? I am just idly wondering as I imagine a gilded life of tech journalism (which will be a million miles from the reality of deadline driven millstone) But good luck to them - LWN always has the clearest explanation of "this is what the mile long thread on the mailing list means"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ossusermivami 3y agoyes they have mentioned it multiple times in some of their articles, the website is in python...
- jeron 3y agoI couldn't have guessed with the way the website looks /s
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- omgJustTest 3y agoYou can tell they are optimizing (and do a very good job at it) for quality, brevity and importance. They don't need, and should not, optimize for other things.
- phist_mcgee 3y agoI call it FOSScore. It's almost a badge of honor to have your website be as minimal and stripped down as possible. The undefeated champion of this of course is Dan Luu https://danluu.com/ https://danluu.com/
- sverhagen 3y agoIf ever a job seems deadline-driven, I'd have gone with journalism.
- constantly 3y agoThis is awesome. LWN is one of my favorite publications.
- jmclnx 3y agoI remember when LWN was a small site run by one person. Interesting how they were able to grow into a real company with real revenue. Newspapers should have studied them as they grew.
- tuckerpo 3y agoPeople writing about the Linux kernel get paid more than I do to write the Linux kernel. :^)
- tux3 3y agoAn easily solved problem Should kernel devs start commenting some of the more write-only parts of the kernel all on their lonesome, the lovely documentation people at LWN would find themselves out of a job and enjoying a deserved retirement!
- jeffparsons 3y agoIMO good tech writers are way undervalued in general, so I'm really happy to see that this position appears to be well-compensated. If I were an LWN subscriber, I'd also be happy to know that my subscription is contributing to that person's salary. I still remember when Steve Klabnik moved on from Mozilla he mentioned in a blog post [1] that he'd recently discovered he was the lowest-paid member of his team. I was simultaneously flabbergasted, because I felt that Steve's contribution to the Rust project was so huge that it was hard to imagine what the Rust experience would have been without him — and entirely unsurprised, because it's so typical of organisations to undervalue writing work. Writing is communication. In my experience, in any endeavour involving more than one person, communication is the single biggest factor in success or failure. So... you know what I'm getting at: pay your communication specialists well. [1] https://steveklabnik.com/writing/thank-u-next https://steveklabnik.com/writing/thank-u-next
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoWriting is a force multiplier. People use and adopt the new features going into the kernel because of lwn. This is the medium where sagas like eBPF and io_uring play out & are heard of, where folks get inspired to use these capabilities. Open source in particular needs these bards, to sing these artificer's epics.
- mongol 3y agoLWN.net is maybe the oldest website I still return to. And it looks the same too! I think it existed already in the 90s?
- Dudester230602 3y ago"in such a case, salary and benefits will be dependent on what we are able to arrange in the specific location" How generous, they understand there are countries out there where software development specialists are accustomed to higher compensation than in USA. Hence the language used.
- smartbit 3y agoThere is a spin-off from gitlab that enables hiring people in many countries in the world. Could come handy.