✍️ From Tech Docs to Blog Posts: How Writing Can Transform Your Career

Writing has a transformative power, whether for technical documents, side projects, or personal growth. Reflecting on a year of consistent online writing, I'll share insights on how writing helps you.

You probably don’t care about tech influencers telling you about their writing journey.

But you care about improving your writing in your technical documents. Or preparing a presentation at work.

One way or another, we all write. And this post can give you insights to improve it.

Exactly one year ago, I stared at an OKR I set for Q3 2023:

"Code a blog, deploy it, and start writing."

But the reality? I hadn’t done a thing. So, I made a snap decision: I created a Substack account and hit publish that very weekend. And it changed everythin

Snapshot after one year of writing in Substack

❓ Why should you care about your writing

1️⃣ Writing is an important skill for learning

Having to write online is a personal forcing function to learn. Without quality inputs, you don’t have quality outputs.

Even without sharing online, when I read books or take courses I take notes.

Before writing online, my notes were a dump of information. They were focused on ease of writing because I was never reading them.

But now writing online has switched me to reading-first. I write to make the reading easy, and that’s harder. In the process of writing this way, I have to reflect more on the information.

2️⃣ Writing will increase your confidence

Sharing your thoughts with the world is intimidating.

Making a technical proposal to your team is scary.

The only way to lose fear is by exposing yourself to these situations long enough.

If you regularly post online, you are iterating faster than if you wait to have the opportunity at work.

3️⃣ A side project will increase your discipline

I have struggled to keep up with writing online during this year. 52 weeks of writing translated to 48 posts. We all have more things in our lives than the side-project.

All-or-nothing thinking is a common human bias. We think that either we go to the gym 5 times a week or better to drop it. The reality is that anything makes progress, and you don’t lose everything if you can’t keep up on busy periods.

If you expose your side project online, writing, or anything else, you have a forcing function to keep doing it.

🤓 How to write better

The sardine method. I got this one from a Spanish book about public speaking, by Fer Miralles.

1️⃣ Single responsibility principle of posts (or sections)

A newsletter is a form of social media. Just a bit longer.

When someone reads the post, they are looking for a single, clear learning.

People will perceive you as a better communicator if they get an outcome after reading you, instead of feeling they lost their time reading.

The same happens with an email, a Slack message, or a technical document at work. For emails and Slack messages, think about the outcome you want to communicate first, then write.

For a technical document, give a clear outcome to each section.

Don’t mix ideas and topics. Don’t do spaghetti writing

2️⃣ Understand the structure of a post

Part 1 - The hook.

You want to catch people’s attention and let them know if this is for them.

Questions work well as long as you answer the question through the text. Storytelling and humor can also catch attention.

At work, you don’t want to lose your readers' time. Catching attention by letting them know who should read the post will make them engaged. An example:

If you consume the dataset shopping_orders, this is a mandatory migration for you.

Part 2 - The message

A list of sections is easier to handle and keeps it engaging. A list of pros/cons, a list of stages of a person’s transformation.

In a technical design at work, your sections can be parts of the system. Interface exposed to the client, compute layer of the service, data layer, dependency layer, etc

Part 3 - The conclusion

Tie it all together. If you started with a question, make sure to answer it. If possible, end with a natural call-to-action (CTA)—like a link to a book recommendation or tool that can help the reader take the next step.

🍻 Benefits after writing

1️⃣ You distinguish yourself in your job

Let’s be honest, most people don’t do any of this. And that’s why you doing something uncommon will differene you.

You’ll be the #1 friend of the employer branding people. They are eager to find engineers who have something to say on top of coding.

(Pro tip: Mention your side project next time you’re on a date. You’ll have more interesting stories than the average Joe. It worked for me!)

2️⃣ Opportunities will find you

Writing makes you visible. And when you're visible, opportunities have a way of finding you.

At work, I was featured in a LinkedIn article and got invited to give a tech talk at a meetup. Through my newsletter, I’ve connected with incredible people, collaborated on articles, and learned a ton.

3️⃣ It’s Fun—Seriously

Writing online isn’t for everyone, but you’ll never know until you try.

During my university years, I was that person who went above and beyond—sharing notes, solving extra exercises, and putting everything online. When I started working, that part of me faded, and I missed it.

I encourage you to think back: What part of you have you left behind as work and life took over? Whether it's writing or something else, find a way to bring it back.

🎯 Conclusion

You don’t need to be a tech influencer. You don’t need thousands of followers.

Just adopt this mindset: When you see something, write something. Share your thoughts, and you’ll get better at expressing them over time.

Don’t stay in the shadows. Share your work.

In the spirit of not procrastinating one decision more time, I have enabled paid subscriptions to this newsletter.

Right now prices are €4.99/month for the yearly subscription, €6.99 for the monthly subscription. The only way to improve the value for paid subs is to start a paid sub tier and grow from there.

To celebrate this 1-year mark, I’m providing a 50% discount.

👉 Get it before September 29th

🗞️ Other articles people like

Scared of a new project? Here’s how to get sh*t done in a corporate job

😎 My strategy to become a TOP 1% engineer

My strategy to deliver more results

Ask First, Code Later: The single, most important question

👏 Weekly applause

Sharing a few things from my side:

• Interview on LinkedIn

• Onsite Meetup October 2nd in Madrid

Some good articles I read this week:

• Being an engineering manager at Amazon by

  Leading Developers
  and
  Gilad Naor
  . Here they talk about some useful concepts for any company, like introducing mechanisms to solve recurring problems instead of relying on good intentions.

• A New Era of Writing Code by

  The Developing Dev
  . Treating LLMs as tools and knowing in which moment they are the best tool in your toolbelt

• Growing from engineer to Staff engineer and thriving by

  Engineering Leadership
  and
  Sidwyn Koh
  . One of the biggest realizations is that the higher you go, the more autonomy you have over your schedule. But it’s not like by having control of your schedule you’d climb higher. It’s the other way around: When you are solid enough to climb high, you are trusted with more autonomy.