From what I've heard from tech writers, it's a job that very few people want to do for a long time, or make a career of it. You get someone for a year or two at most, and then they move on to something more interesting, is the impression I have.

A lot of companies pay and treat tech writers like shit.

If you're a decent tech writer who can write well, grok engineer speak, collaborate well with engineers during crunch time before a release, and apply your technical knowledge to build and maintain documentation infrastructure... well, you'll get comped slightly beneath the level of a developer with similar experience.

For folks like me who enjoy the writing side of things, it's worth it. But there are very few people who truly appreciate both the writing and the development side of the role. You honestly need both.

Most companies pay poorly, and wind up hiring non-technical folks who can barely manage a CMS. Those people can be helpful in a larger org, but at the end of the day, most technical orgs need a truly technical writer who can talk with the engineers directly and mess around with the product pre-release.

Great tech writers have the skills needed to actually do software development or project management, and often end up either moving into one of those or going to more creative writing endeavors.

This would seem to be a sign that some changes are needed to make it into a career people actually want to do. Perhaps it's at simple as paying more, though probably other changes in workflow/working conditions/status (all correlated with pay) are what would really help the most.