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What is this?
This annual survey, run by the Write the Docs community, aims to gather data about salaries for people working in documentation and related fields around the world.
- Browse previous survey results (https://www.writethedocs.org/surveys/)
We hope that this data can help our community members determine appropriate salary ranges, provide a benchmark for negotiations, and inform employment-related decision-making.
Additionally, we’re hoping the results spark discussion of employment-related trends and issues in our industry, such as pay transparency, job stability and “return to office” mandates.
Who’s behind it?
Write the Docs (https://www.writethedocs.org/) is a global community of people who care about documentation. We currently:
- have a Slack network with thousands of participants
- run conferences on three continents
- host meetups in over 40 cities
- publish a monthly email newsletter
Who should participate?
We encourage everyone working in areas related to documentation to complete this survey, no matter what country you live in, what level of skill or experience you possess, or what industry you operate in.
The questions are for people of all employment types: full-time or part-time, permanent or contract, employee or freelance/self-employed – or any combination thereof. If you are currently unemployed, but have worked at least part of the past year, we would like your contribution.
What else do I need to know?
All responses are completely anonymous. In the interests of obtaining accurate and useful data for comparisons, most questions are required, but some have an “I’d prefer not to answer” option. We do not publish statistics for any demographic with less than 10 respondents (less than 30 in the case of 25th/75th percentile splits), to avoid accidental exposure of personally identifiable information.
Data gathered is used by the Write the Docs team internally for production of our report only, and is not shared with any third party.
With all of this in mind, we encourage everyone to answer as fully as possible.
The survey will be open until the end of January 2025, and results will be made available – for everyone, for free – in the first quarter of 2025.
Ready? Let’s go!
Those who took the survey in previous years may notice some changes that we’ve made, based on feedback:
- The survey is broken up into seven sections (nine if you have worked as both an employee and a contractor). You can now review and edit your responses before making your final submission.
- For privacy when completing the survey in public spaces, actual salary figures are masked by default – to view the number that you’ve entered, check the box labelled “view my salary/rate”.
- It’s now possible to fill out the survey as both an employee and a contractor, freelancer or self-employed individual. Estimated time to complete the entire survey is 15-20 minutes.
One final note: while it’s possible to successfully complete the survey on mobile devices, due to the scope of the survey and some of the long lists of options, the user experience is definitely better on larger screens.