Call for Applicants: Authors, Tech Editors, and Coders!

The Tech Editing Team

Have you ever found a bug, grammar mistake, or technical mistake in one of our tutorials? Well, technical editing might be for you. :]

Our Tech Editors are some of our most experienced developers. We have particularly high standards for what we look for in tech editors and a grueling tryout process.

This is for good reason. As a tech editor, we look to you to “level-up” each tutorial you get your hands on by adding your technical expertise, and make each tutorial as polished as possible.

By improving our tutorials, you make a huge difference in the iOS community by making sure everyone is learning the right stuff. It also really helps our authors learn and improve, and you’ll learn a ton along the way as well – while getting paid. :]

Note: We actually just had a call for tech editors just a few months ago. But now that we’ve started a brand new Update Team our tech editors are getting stretched a bit thin, so we could use a few more. If you applied before but didn’t hear back, feel free to try again.

Benefits

There are many great reasons to be a technical editor for raywenderlich.com:

• You’ll become a better developer. Being a technical editor forces you to carve out learning time in your schedule, which can be difficult to do otherwise, due to the demands of a day job.
• You’ll become a better writer. By reviewing tutorials, you will also learn a lot about writing. Both from helping other authors improve, and from learning from other fellow editors.
• You’ll get a lot of exposure. You’ll get to know each member of the Tutorial Team, their experience level and writing style, and work with me and the other editors more closely than just about anyone else. These contacts may prove to be invaluable, and will likely lead to some special opportunities.
• You’ll get paid! We also pay for each tech edit performed, and you get a ton of free stuff for joining too. So basically, you’re getting paid to learn. :]

This is an informal, part-time position – you’d be editing about 1-3 tutorials per month. We do expect that when you are assigned a tutorial to tech edit, that you complete the tech edit within 1 week.

Requirements and How to Apply

Here are the requirements:

• You must be an advanced-level developer. You are probably a team lead at your full time job.
• [If you’re an iOS developer] You must have been digging into Swift already. You probably can get a good score on our Swift Ninja programming challenge.
• You must read a lot of technical books, blogs, and/or podcasts and be up-to-speed with the latest news and techniques.
• You have a very detail-oriented/pedantic personality.
• You should be a great writer with fluent English writing skills.

To apply, simply send me an email with the following details:

• Why do you want to join the Tech Editing Team?
• Please tell me a little bit about yourself and your experience.
• What is the best app you’ve made or worked on, and why are you proud of the work you did on this app? [Please include an App Store link]
• What technical blogs and podcasts do you follow on a regular basis?
• Please link to any examples of technical writing you have done in the past.
• Please include links to: your GitHub account, your StackOverflow account, your Twitter account.

I will be selecting a few of the top applicants to tryout for the team by going through a multi-phase tryout process – I will send you more details if you’re selected.

The Code Team

The Code Team is for developers who are awesome at writing code, but who are not interested (or maybe not good) in writing a tutorial about their code.

Your job is to write cool advanced level sample projects demonstrating neat techniques that other developers would be interested in learning about. For example, these are the kinds of projects we’d be looking for:

• Reproducing the “book open” animation in Paper by FiftyThree
• Reproducing some of these popular iOS animations
• Reproducing other popular UI techniques like Sam Page has done on subjc.com
• Reproducing 2D lighting in Unity like in this post
• Prototyping water simulation in Sprite Kit
• Investigating popular open-source Auto Layout libraries and writing a cool project demonstrating usage of each
• Making animated 3D bar charts and line graphs with Scene Kit
• …and much more (we want you to surprise and delight us)!

If some of these projects sound a fun challenge to you and something you’d definitely be capable of, you might be a good match for the Code Team. :]

Benefits

As a part of the raywenderlich.com Code Team, you’ll receive the following benefits:

• It’s a fun learning experience. The kind of person we’re looking for on the Code Team is the kind of person who loves figuring out cool things like this for fun and learning. This is a perfect chance to get some fun learning challenges that also have a practical application.
• Make a tutorial happen – without having to write it! If you wished you could make a tutorial to contribute to the community without having to do the writing part – now you can. Just make an awesome project and hand it over to us – we’ll take it form there.
• Mad bragging rights. Whenever we write a tutorial using your technique, we’ll give you full credit as the brains behind it – check this post by the always-epic Orta for an example :]
• You’ll get paid! We also will pay you a set fee for each project, and you get a ton of free stuff for joining too. So basically, you’re getting paid to learn. :]

This is an informal, part-time position – you’d be writing about 3 sample projects per year. We do expect that when you are assigned a sample project to write, that you complete the sample project within 1 month.