Why I'm starting a blog (and why now)

Five years flies by fast. It was only five years ago that I was learning how to write code, with hopes of becoming a software engineer. In that time, I pivoted from software engineering dreams, to nestling into the passion I have for developer experience and education. Bring on the technical writing.

But I am not the only one who has changed in the past five years. It's the industry, the tools, the way developers work and learn, and may I dare even say, the energy.

The energy? Yes, the energy. Let me explain. The tech industry I entered in 2020 was frivolous, full of energy. Think: big fun company retreats, crazy swag boxes shipped to your door, lots of "free" stuff. People were just excited to be there. Then the economy crumbled from the aftermath of the pandemic, and things got weird. Those lavish retreats became meetings over Zoom. The hype energy got replaced by an underlying anxiety about job security. Layoffs became normalized. Everyone was on edge.

Then enter AI. Suddenly everyone - not just technical writers, but engineers, designers, product managers, the whole industry - was questioning their value. Are we suddenly replaceable? It sent people scrambling to find ways to innovate quickly, to pivot, to AI-proof themselves. The energy became defensive as people shifted to survival mode instead of exploration mode.

In the early days of learning to write docs, I was grateful for my teammates who crafted me into the writer I am today. Their peer reviews, advice, and mentorship remain inside my brain, and even in my writing style. I can hear their review comments in my head every time I catch myself in passive voice. I can hear their encouragement when I am deep in the trenches of making sense of an API.

But now I wonder, with machines entering the race, will new technical writers experience the same beginnings to their careers? Will peer reviews be replaced with machine reviews? Will the feedback stick the way it has for me? Or will it become automated and we lose all connection to the process? Not to be pessimistic, but I have concerns.

I have also watched in real time as the audiences I write for change rapidly. Developers still read docs, don't get me wrong, but they want to read them differently, and they want them embedded in their workflows. With ~67% of developers using AI tools daily, there's a massive shift in how they consume information. While many of us are focused on better documentation and engagement metrics, we are losing our audiences to ChatGPT.

Developers want information delivered in their development environment through tools like Model Context Protocol (MCP) and local models that can understand their codebase. Instead of opening a new tab to read docs, they want to ask an AI assistant "How do I authenticate with this API?" and get an answer without disrupting their workflow.

The irony isn't lost on me. We spend months perfecting our documentation, testing our code examples, and crafting clear explanations - only to have it filtered through an LLM that hallucinates and potentially misinterprets what we wrote. It's like playing telephone, but the middle person is an overly confident robot.

I am starting this blog to reflect on the past five years, but also to look forward to the next. To explore what works, what doesn't, and what I'm experimenting with. To spark conversations within your teams and communities. To (hopefully) bring you some peace and comic relief in an uncertain time. Here's the thing - both you and your audience are being shaped by the same forces. The economic uncertainty, the AI boom, and the changing expectations. We're all figuring out our place in this new world.

Thank you for reading. I hope you tune in weekly for my brain dump.