Why Writing a Technical Blog will Advance Your Career

And how to select topics to write about

Photo by airfocus on Unsplash

Communication is a critical skill for data scientists, programmers, and anyone in a technical role. Projects are started (and terminated) based on both the merit of an idea, progress, and how well key stakeholders understand it.

People who can explain what they are doing and why are more likely to advance to a new role and be promoted.

Indeed, wherever you are in your career, you should be able to explain to stakeholders (like your manager) what you’re coding and why. This is especially important if they don’t know much about your technical work.

Writing a technical blog improves your communication skills. We all know that practice makes perfect — this is especially true for communication.

Writing forces you to formulate ideas with clarity and conciseness. As you explain technical concepts, you end up understanding them more deeply.

A blog can showcase your knowledge and expertise. A blog can serve as an accessible companion to a LinkedIn page, resume, and GitHub portfolio. It can also give you visibility amongst colleagues and your professional network because each new blog post is another opportunity to highlight your work on LinkedIn.

A blog is also a tool for growing your knowledge, if you write about a topic that is new to you. In any case, technical writing solidifies your knowledge because it can require some research and references, even if you are knowledgeable about the topic.

The hardest part about writing is deciding what to write about!

Selecting Topics to Write About

Write to yourself

At one time, I was reading a lot of articles about careers and roles in the data field but didn’t see anyone mention the role I fall into: full stack data science. So I wrote about it, adding my perspective.

I personally enjoy reading about new machine learning algorithms and python packages.