Society for Technical Communication to permanently close its doors | Hacker News Reader

Society for Technical Communication to permanently close its doors

stc.org

87 pointsSgt_Apone25 comments

I've been working in this space for a long time, where I'm one of the co-founders of Write the Docs: https://www.writethedocs.org/ -- we focus more on software docs.

The view from the industry is basically that STC was a bit behind the times, and was slowly dwindling in terms of reach and value. They still had some active chapters, magazine, and academic journal that provided value for folks, but membership wasn't as valuable as it had been.

They have been around a long time, and had a wider purview that WTD, focusing on many different types of technical writing. They had members in industries like Automotive, Engineering, and Aerospace, as well as Software.

The best way to think about them is something like the ACM in the software industry. They have been taken over by more current community approaches in various areas (eg. Pycon), but also still doing some more traditional stuff that adds value but isn't as relevant to day-to-day practitioners.

I don't know if the ACM is comparable. They run so many academic conferences that the list gets its own Wikipedia page [0]. Many are heavy hitters in their respective fields, like SIGGRAPH (graphics), SOSP (systems), and PLDI (programming languages). I think of them more as an academic publisher and organizer than as a professional association.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Association_for_Compu...

I think the point was more to contrast STC as a certifying and publishing body, versus WTD as more of a peer/user group.

I was a member of an STC chapter in grad school and I went to a bunch of meetings and networking events hoping to get some practical career advice from more experienced technical writers.

At no point did it feel like anyone in the org could (or would) actually help me in the transition from grad school to technical writing work. It was a really disheartening experience. It does not surprise me that membership has waned over the years.

Sorry to hear about your experience. I recently considered joining STC in an attempt to bolster my career a bit (as technical writer without a college degree), but wasn't sure the theoretical benefits were worth the membership cost. Sounds like they might not have been able to help much in that area.

I think mileage may have also varied based on industry and location. I eventually found my way into tech as a writer anyways, but most of the people I met via the STC were not working at tech companies. Granted it was DC so lots of defense contractors and the like.

Even before the STC called it a day, you'd probably be better served attending local tech writer meetups (assuming there are any in your area) or joining the Write the Docs community (https://www.writethedocs.org/). When I was toiling in the tech comm world, I found that both helped my in my career more than interacting with the STC.

Thanks for these suggestions. I subscribe to the Write the Docs newsletter, and this is good motivation for me to dig deeper into what they have to offer.

I worked as a technical writer earlier in this century and was a member of the STC for a year. In my case, that was a year too long. Like more than a few other technical writers I knew and worked with, I didn't get any value out of my membership. I got more out of the (at the time) burgeoning technical communication blogosphere than I did from the STC

The STC, at least in my view, was several steps behind the times. It was a large organization that was too slow to adapt to changing realities.

You can see some of their financial data at ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/314...). I'm curious what longtimers think led to this.

Declining memberships, maybe companies not valuing technical communication as a separate field as much, the rise of LLMs all seem like possible contributing factors.

My experience is that companies just don't value good technical writing. And a lot of managers are basically illiterate, so it's the blind leading the blind.

Finally no more professionals trying to make technology understandable by outsiders. Developers in control, let's hide knowledge behind cryptic terminology, issue databases and impossible to navigate web sites - long beyond the abilities of Google now requiring AI to learn anything.

I feel sad that we are loosing the long form communication - deep manuals and books. When I started we had dedicated technical writers but then lost them along the way supposedly to save money. They then took other roles not necessarily shining in them while developers did a worse job and were loaded with yet another task. Technology allows for vertical integration of workflows and there is value in removing human to human transitions. But there was also value created in these interactions. Full stack, dev ops or getting rid of dedicated testers are other examples where we are stretching human ability and not always getting a better outcome.

This increasing cognitive demand paired with an increase in lacking empathy is a worrying combination

Demand for developer-focused material*

The compression to run orgs on minimum viable humans will continue until system failure. Boeing, Intel, etc. As long as nothing breaks, there is no incentive not to.

Something went very wrong when whoever, in a Technical Communication Society, decided that the tech writers were a good place to skimp on costs.

There go my hopes that they will eventually be responsible for the same acronym in the far future! Ref: https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Standard_Template_Const...

Jokes aside, this is really sad news. I have heard about them several times and was rooting for them, even had plans to visit in 2026... :/

I hope their good educators get reassigned to places where they can make even more impact. We seriously need better education nowadays, technical or otherwise. I heard that they were too academical and not practical enough but even with that (and if it's true) it's still sad news.

I wish the people from there all the best in the future.

I graduated college in the early 1990s and minored in technical writing. I started the first "Student Society of STC" back in college, and that lead to some good internships and a few jobs. Wrote software manuals and online help for an email software company that ran on the AS/400 and MVS. Had to write and code it in SGML, then that eventually moved to HTML.

In my daily work today, I still rely on all those basic principles of technical writing.

As a "long timer" so to speak, I think eventually there ended up being a decline of pure "technical writer" jobs out there, and not too many people going into the profession.

I was a long-time member of STC, attaining the rank of Fellow. I found STC membership rewarding, mostly because our local chapter actively supported professional development and job search. Pre-pandemic, we met and socialized regularly, and so built a strong, tight-knit community.

Earlier in my life I attended a number of their chapter meetings, and I know someone who is currently on their board. Fairly shocked to hear that they're closing. Definitely does not feel like a growing field, but still incredibly valuable.

Founded 1953? Wow. Gonna call that a good run.

LLMs basically make this job irrelevant for 99.999% of use cases so this is unsurprising.

LLMs produce a ton of garbage. The job is still relevant if you care about accuracy. Maybe LLMs or some future form of AI can do the job, but using LLMs today is ill-advised.

99.999% of jobs do not care about accuracy at the level of a technical writer. The ones that do will continue to hire them.

I think you grossly overestimate the accuracy of LLM-generated docs and underestimate how much time technical writers spend on tasks that aren't strictly "writing." Generating text is the easy part; gathering and verifying information is much more tedious, but arguably way more important.

And I have yet to encounter an LLM that can repeatedly poke an engineer or PM until they cough up the details you're after—let alone one that can do that without making an enemy out of that engineer or PM :P

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