Here’s my experience:

I worked for the third largest sw company in the world. They came through and laid off the writing team in the US, Australia, and NZ and then moved tech writing to Estonia. Before Estonia formally joined the EU, they laid off those writers to avoid EU constraints and hired writers in India.

Now, management has found that they can go to China and decrease their costs even more. They now have a mandate to move all technical writing (and other jobs) to China in the coming years. Do you really think that this was done because these writers are more competent or because they are cheaper? Was it their keen eye on quality or their myopic vision on the bottom line?

Indian is not a unique case. China also spends a lot of time teaching English through their education system. It will be interesting to see your perspective when your job moves to Bejing.

Also, it has been my experience that many companies don’t really want great documentation. There is more money to be made by consulting than handing out free information to allow internal corporate teams to do tasks themselves. As margins for sw and hw diminish, it is the implementation and consulting teams that continues to make money.

But all of this is up to the market. If I am really a better writer than an ESL writer, then I have to prove it. To that end, I am putting together a tribe of writers to start publishing in competition with cheap corporate writers and steal away customers. Let’s see what the CEO does then. I plan to offer superior training, documentation, and professional services information using disruptive technologies such as information mashups focused on customer needs rather than corporate needs.

Let’s see what happens when we really compete on quality and subject matter expertise in the open market. To that end, maybe you can join up with me after they send your job east.

I am a technical writer and editor from India working for the software sector for over a decade now.

I would like to point out that ESL writers can be more careful writers than native speakers. I have seen this happen repeatedly when working as part of teams spread across USA, UK, and India. Also, they build formidable SME knowledge in their domains. Consequently, the writing from such writers is indeed very valuable to the customers. Often such technical writers lead doc departments here.

And there are many organizations here hunt for good technical writers till they get one. This is evident from the number of interviews they conduct, the kind of people involved in the hiring process. In spite of such careful hiring, sometimes they end up with wrong hires. This leads to some attrition. Attrition also happens when organizations try to employ good writers with minimal hikes or good writers switch jobs because they have better opportunity elsewhere.

And then why does the world carry the opinion that ESL writers produce low quality content? There is more work here than good technical writers alone can handle. So that leads to staffing doc departments with less-than-perfect writers who are bound to do a bad job. Here India presents a unique case. In India, all of us study English for 13-14 years. And those who are good at writing English can become good technical writers, if not SMEs, pretty quickly. However, we still find mediocre content being created by such writers. I guess the reason lies elsewhere. Time and again I observed bad jobs are from those writers who are not ethical or plain careless. They do not want to justify the pay check they take home. They don’t raise all the questions they should raise as a tech writer, and don’t research enough. Consequently, the content takes a hit. And bad ethics a found anywhere across the globe.

Also I see that mediocre writers are rarely tolerated in start-ups/small setups. In large setups, often mediocre writers hide behind rules, processes, and metrics and are tolerated.

So, I would like the world to consider one fact. Probably places like India are not only cheaper but they do a great job….and the CEOs, many of them, who ship the jobs to places like India do have a keen eye for the quality of the documents produced here.

Sincerely,
Surya.

I believe that writers need to present content in all mediums(videos, e-books, blogs, formal doc, working with social groups) and be flexible in voice, message, and style. That is where I think we need to be flexible. I think that is where Paul is correct in this statement…we don’t just want to specialize in being help system writers (and many of us are today).

But I also think we need to be subject matter experts. We need an understanding of a domain of information that we research and write about. We can’t just be scribes anymore following around the SMEs. We need to be SMEs at some level. In that way we are going to need to be more specialized as authors/content strategists/technical communicators and not just tech writers.

Here’s an example: I understand the market for IT system management tools for small-medium businesses based on my experience of the past decade. I want to engage these customers in this domain using a variety of mediums, portals, and publishing techniques. I want to be flexible here.

But I also want to define what market I am after. I don’t want to be hired by one of these companies. I want to compete for customer attention. I believe large companies don’t really want extensive information about their products in the cloud because they depend on training and professional service add-on sales. They are also outsourcing the tech writing jobs to junior ESL writers that provide low value, low quality help files only to save money. I want to engage in the questions of this IT mgmt system for now and the future and take away mindshare from their marketing departments and go directly to the user.

I want to compete at the market level and be more of an analyst and provider of ITIL and other best practices for existing (or new) customers in providing useful, unbiased content for users of MS, BMC, Symantec, KACE, LanDesk, and other competing vendors. Or for those using a miscellany of products. Or maybe just those who partner up with Dell to manage their systems.

My main goal is be flexible in providing content wherever I can and in whatever format is needed, yet stay in my domain of knowledge.

This came out of my analogy of the finches on Daphne which was a bit convoluted. My point was that the competition and environment changes, so we need to decide what we want or is available to feed on–what domain or market or job we want–and find our rightful position to do so.

As an independent author, I think I can bypass the vendors marketing messaging, staid and obvious doc, marketing slanted positioning papers, and go directly to the customer/user/reader. But I need to also be more than just someone who writes low value, obvious content. I need to confront the customer needs using whatever tools of communication I can use an be loyal to them. I need to create a new job in the market…go after other seeds.

Does this make sense? I am still making my way through this. I am putting together a PRD for this market with my intentions, cash stream, audience, publishing portals and possibilities and more. I need to take my theoretical and take it to the streets.

This comment is kind of a brainstorm, so let me know what your thoughts are. Thanks again.

“We don’t want to specialize.”
“The need in the market relies on an understanding of customer needs in vertical markets and delivered to them where they congregate.”

Aren’t vertical markets specialized as opposed to horizontal markets that aren’t? So aren’t you really saying that we need to understand vertical (specialized) markets and target those customers? If that’s not your message, examples would help. Thanks.

I also agree with Paul that we need to expand our writing to be analysts, as well as champions of customers, creative forces in the marketplace, and writers of high-value content.

Corda’s point, that more tech writer jobs are moving to lower wage locations is also a good point. The traditional way of rotely writing help files, reference tables, and inside-out product doc is also dying.

The need in the market relies on an understanding of customer needs in vertical markets and delivered to them where they congregate. The traditional ways of tech writing are fading away and those left should be done as cheaply as possible because it is little more than a required, but low value delivery.

What is really needed is what Paul says, more analysts to help wend through changes, best practices for vertical markets, better writing to capture an audience, and more useful delivery methods. This will require real content strategists and fewer tech writers. We just need to evolve to this higher value position as Paul says and Corda points out and I agree with vociferously.

The small seeds will be taken leaving the larger seeds for a new breed of aggregator.