Where we are now, and where we are going

When I refer to our role as “The Evolved Technical Writer” it is because at its fundamental, the function is shifting, not shrinking.

I have always been a person who deeply enjoys looking at where we were to appreciate where we are; so, let’s dive in.

2018 and earlier was an interesting era for tech writers in SaaS. I remember being tasked with building and maintaining complex document repositories in SharePoint. Begging my collogues to follow the naming standards I had set was a near-daily occurrence. If a customer needed specific information? “Alexandra, please create a good looking 1-pager”. What’s a 1-pager you ask? Well, a PDF of course! Yes, we actually used to (very commonly) send customers bespoke PDFs that gave the explanations and information they needed.

In this era the technical content – though always essential – was an afterthought. Partnering with Support, Professional Services, and other customer-interfacing roles was still the norm for companies. We’d speak to customers first, and offer the tech content as a compliment.

Then suddenly we began to see a big shift as we approached the 20s. Self-service became the service. Stats showed that most customers don’t want to pick up the phone unless they absolutely need to. Having a large, detailed, online help center was a boon for any business. This is when I really started to have fun! Building an online help center from the ground up made me feel like a pioneer. And connecting to Google Analytics to see proof of the immense impact the content is having? That’s a professional high if there ever was one.

But of course, as the saying goes in SaaS, “the only constant is change”. AI smashed in like the cool-aid man (I am a millennial, indulge me my outdated metaphors), and disrupted us again. If you remember seeing headlines about tech companies laying off writing roles in droves, it would have been right around 2023. It was a scary and uncertain period (which the industry is still recovering from) that forced a lot of brilliant humans to understandably pivot away from our profession.

It didn’t take too long before companies began to see that AI was not a magic wand. Bots hallucinate without good content. And unless there is constant input, the output is garbage (hello, slop).

So where are we now, in 2026? In what we can call the “hybrid era”. Those who remain in this function know that our survival depends on partnering with AI, not rejecting it. We are AI content strategists, ensuring for the first time in our history that content is designed to be optimized not just for humans, but for AI bot ingestion as well.

This is what I know, this is where we are now. These hybrid jobs have many different titles, but at their root they are still technical writing roles. We evolve, but we know where we started, and who we are.