Why you shouldn’t hire a UX writer-slash-other

If you’re already hiring them, let them do their job

You wouldn’t ask a developer to do QA automation although they probably could. You wouldn’t ask a product marketer to drive growth marketing though they probably have some idea of how to do it. That’s because strong companies hire strong talent and then let them do the thing they’re most skilled at. That’s how a company gets the most bang for their buck — they pay the best to do their best. Why would you pay someone to do a thing they’re not as good at? Or don’t want to be doing which inevitably leads to poorer results?

Product writers are unique — leverage it

UX writers have “writer” in their title but it doesn’t mean they should do every type of writing. Content designers have “design” in their title but they don’t do every kind of design. Product content is a specialty with a unique skill set, a unique area of expertise, and unique value to contribute to the product and company if you let them instead of asking them to do something else.

Get all of the value you’re paying for

Some companies use full stack developers and sometimes the reason is to avoid hiring both front end and back end. The thing is, a full stack developer does not equal a FE + BE, they equal half of each, and in some cases, a Jack of all trades…

There may be some advantages in some contexts to hiring one person to do a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But as a general rule, I would highly, highly recommend hiring people who are the best at a thing and letting them focus on that thing.

Attract the best

Once I was asked to review a job description before the company posted it on LinkedIn. I told them they’d never get the applicants they really wanted with the post they were about to put out. They wanted a really good UX writer, but half the description was copywriting. This might attract marketing writers looking for a foot in the door to product, but it wasn’t going to get them what they were looking for in this case. If you want an awesome product writer, hire a Product Writer, not a Product Writer Slash…

Happy writers deliver more, better, faster

In my experience, product writers want to write product. They don’t want to write marketing or technical documentation or much of anything else. By and large. Most product writers being asked to do these other jobs are not as happy as they would be if they were allowed to stick to product. And I think we can all agree that happy writers are better writers. You can’t buy that kind of motivation.

TL;DR

Product writers are product writers.

Marketing writers are marketing writers.

Technical writers are technical writers.

Content writers are content writers.

Please for the love of whatever you love, let us do our thing.