Questions about Career

Been reading up on careers in technical writing, but there are a few factors that are really important to me. Can someone fill in the blanks?

Who hires technical writers?
Do technical writers freelance or stay with one employer?
Is the pay worth the effort and stress?
Is the job stressful? How stressful?

Thanks

I'm not sure about other fields, but in the IT consulting industry, I've seen technical writers at every large company I've consulted with. With all the different documents.. functional requirements doc, design docs, source to target docs, etcs... Technical writers are always needed to proofread and cleanup.. especially when the author of the doc doesn't have English as a first language which is the case a lot of times.

I've seen a lot of people who have jobs that freelance technical writing on the side for proofreading and editing. In fact, I've seen a number of gigs on mymuto for that exact sort of thing.

Hello,

I'm a freelance editor and proofreader. Not that I'm looking for even more competition, but if you have superior writing skills, you might want to give freelance editing a try. For $10 or just a bit more or less per month, you can have a hosted website and domain name. This way you can get your name out, and then you can always add technical writing services to your list of offerings. If nothing else, a website will give you a medium for displaying your sample work and can be used as a credential and resume booster.

Matt