Anindita Basu is a technical writer and spends her time creating user assistance at IBM. Basu has degrees in life science and business administration and was previously employed in finance for 10 years, but her love for writing, helping people and explaining things brought her to pursue technical writing. She also has a blog, Writing Technically.

Why did you decide to pursue this career field?
Because I love to write, I love to explain things and I like helping people solve problems.

What type of preparation did you do to get into this field?
I did not prepare. My graduate degree is in life science and my master's degree is in business administration.  Before I became a technical writer, I was a finance person, but after 10 years of figures, I wanted a change. I became aware of a field known as technical writing, read up job advertisements, realized I have the skills they asked for, prepared some writing samples and jumped right in.

What types of classes and projects did you have to do?
Being a science student all my life had certain advantages that helped me adapt quickly to this career. I knew when to use text and when to use pictures, for example, or how to segregate concepts from procedures, and thus content strategy and information typing were easier for me to understand than some of my other friends who've come into this field from other backgrounds.

How did your education help you in your career?
A background in science had taught me early on to always think in logical steps (algorithms) and my management training meant I could quickly go to the root of any matter.

What was your career path like in this field? 
I started as a technical writer, advanced to a lead position, then realized I like writing more than I like managing people, so returned to an individual contributor position. Thereafter, I moved to an editor's role.

What types of skills is someone required to have to work in your position?
Expertise in the language one is writing in is essential. An understanding of information typing, the ability to create different kinds of content (text, movies, tutorials), and the ability to work with cross-functional and cross-cultural teams is important. It is a definite plus if you also understand the technology behind that which you are documenting.

What do you do on a typical workday?
Interact with the product development team (dev team) and the subject matter experts (SME), get them to show me the product and to answer my questions about the product, then sitting down to write the stuff, then getting the stuff reviewed by the dev team and the SMEs, then getting my editors to review the stuff. Drinking some coffee. Creating indexes and glossaries. On a good day, sitting undisturbed to create a movie tutorial. On a bad day, getting constantly interrupted by people who drop by to ask, "Because you wrote this I thought you could also perhaps know about how to. … " On a very bad day, failing to get any review done by any dev team or SME and the deadline was yesterday.

What type of person do you think is best suited for a job in your field?
Someone who is curious enough (and unafraid enough) to ask the dumbest questions about the product being documented (and get those answered) and someone who looks at things from the user's point of view (not the development team's).