[hobls]

What I've seen is that the salary is dramatically lower, and as you noted, the opportunities to advance into management are more more difficult to obtain. (My wife spent time as a technical writer. I work in software engineering.)

[goodroot]

Not dramatically; both conditions are very dependent on organization.

[hobls]

Yeah? I'm seeing a lot of SDE roles in the $250k+/yr range, and I've never seen tech writing anywhere near there.