There was a time, in the not-too-distant past, when technical writing as a profession held a comfortable, well-established place in the development of products and software. At least, among mature organizations who understood the value that a technical writer brings to the process. Particularly in the software industry, technical writers could count on a fairly predictable routine that coincided with a development cycle that (usually) provided ample time to write 500-page user manuals, plus the online help topics.
