How to get started as a technical writer?

Question

My area of expertise is DevOps/SRE/Infrastructure. I've written a lot of internal docs but I'd like to be more professional about it. I also love working with open source projects.What a more disciplined approach to technical writing would look like in my case? Any ideas welcome, thanks

Brajeshwar · Accepted Answer

Start writing and offer to write for free or a small fee for other popular outlets. Here is a bit of a parallel. About 15-17 years ago, someone approached me and offered to write technical articles for free for my blog (my blog was hot at that time). I got him to write but I also agreed to pay him - not high but pretty decent and way better than most writers here in India at that time.
He got noticed, got a lot more work, hustled hard, and is now a pretty big shot in a mega-corporation. His writings on my blog was not the only and most significant but it did played a major role in his career.
Try it out. Just start writing, offer to write, contribute elsewhere first.