In this episode, I talk with Vladimir Izmalkov, an experienced technical communicator who has built and managed documentation teams and worked across open source and enterprise software in both English and Russian. We talk about his RPG-inspired "skill tree" for technical writers, how mapping your skills into different "classes" can help you make sense of a nonlinear career, and how to build a personal grading system that lets you evaluate yourself against a job's requirements and pitch your adjacent skills with confidence.

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Vladimir and I discuss his winding path into technical writing, which began at a Russian research institute where he worked on information and communication systems for emergency response, before he realized that his mix of technical breadth and a knack for working with documents pointed toward technical writing. We talk about his move to the UK to work at a London startup documenting an open source database, the tension he felt blending honest technical documentation with marketing, and his current role at Canonical, where the team calls themselves "technical authors" to reflect their authority over documentation and their collaborative, guidance-focused work with engineers.

The heart of our conversation is Vladimir's RPG-inspired "skill tree" for technical writers, a model he developed to capture how nonlinear and multidimensional our careers really are. He explains how the many skills a tech writer can develop behave like independent dimensions, and how thinking in terms of "classes" (like a linguistics-focused writer, a tech-curious engineer, a "docs tool sage" who loves automation and tooling, a marketer, or a team leader) can help you make sense of your own experience. We discuss visualizing all of this on a radar chart, and why the real value isn't the picture itself but the deeper understanding it gives you of your strengths and gaps.

We also dig into the practical grading system that makes the skill tree useful for job hunting. Vladimir walks through how to build a leveling scale from a job posting's requirements, grade yourself honestly against it, and then identify where adjacent skills can compensate for gaps, using the example of pitching Docs as Code experience when a role calls for DITA. We close on AI as its own branch of the skill tree, including why Vladimir is cautious about generating documentation from scratch and why his most reliable results come from using AI to build deterministic, testable scripts he can automate rather than automating the AI itself.

About Vladimir Izmalkov:

Vladimir Izmalkov is a technical writer with 15+ years of experience creating developer-oriented documentation in Russian and English. A docs-as-code advocate, he has documented NoSQL databases, cloud platforms, and distributed systems, and takes a thoughtful, cautious approach to AI in technical documentation.

In this episode:

• [00:01:12]: Vladimir's origin story: from a Russian research institute and emergency response systems to discovering technical writing
• [00:05:34]: Realizing technical writing is a named profession, and how broad the field can be
• [00:08:26]: User advocacy and user-centric communication as the heart of the work
• [00:10:09]: From overcomplicated academic writing to simplifying complex products for users
• [00:13:41]: Relocating to the UK and documenting an open source database at a London startup
• [00:15:31]: The tension between honest technical documentation and marketing content
• [00:19:28]: Joining Canonical and why the team calls themselves "technical authors"
• [00:21:12]: Job titles: technical writer, technical author, or documentation engineer?
• [00:23:38]: Where the skill tree idea came from and viewing skills as independent dimensions
• [00:26:40]: Building the RPG-inspired technical writer skill tree
• [00:28:03]: Skill tree "classes": the writer, tech-curious engineer, docs tool sage, marketeer, and team leader
• [00:29:40]: Using a radar chart and building a grading system to level yourself
• [00:31:16]: Tooling as an example: mastering your own tools vs. what a role requires
• [00:32:37]: Projecting adjacent skills onto job requirements (Docs as Code vs. DITA)
• [00:37:37]: AI as a branch of the skill tree and why "competing" against it misses the point
• [00:41:16]: Using AI for automation rather than generating docs from scratch
• [00:43:10]: Why generating docs from scratch is the worst-case use of AI
• [00:50:34]: Vladimir's best piece of advice: ask whether you're doing the wrong thing

Resources discussed in this episode:

• The Technical Writer's Skill Tree - Vladimir's talk, delivered at an online meeting of the ISTC London Area Group on 21 January 2026
• Communicator journal, Volume 1, 2026 - The issue containing Vladimir's article
• Documentation Engineering - Vladimir's YouTube channel, which includes a video on ways to use AI in technical documentation
• Vladimir's ADPList mentor profile

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