Writers in Tech Industry

Testing Time

Job Market is terribly down but most often, on an average, I receive around 5 mails seeking Technical writers in various Software organizations. Some of the organizations have sent mails umpteen times for the same position. I wonder these organizations are really hiring writers in this down time. But looking at the advertisements and consultant’s mail it looks that there is demand for Technical Writers in the market. At the same time I look at two of my friends who are searching for a position as a technical writer for past two months but so far they have no offers in hand. Weighing both the sides I am bit confused and not able to conclude as what is happening in the market and is there really a demand for the technical writers.

However, this reminds me of the situation when there is no hope organization conducts interview to keep job seekers hope alive. To a certain extent it seems alright but if there is absolutely no hiring then this fake exercise becomes counter productive. But who knows what Ramlinga Raju did in Satyam, some other CEO might be doing in other organizations. Interview the Job seekers and keep them in the fake payroll and siphon the money on the part of their salaries. Otherwise, two of my friends running pillar to post for past two months and attending more than ten interviews would have had at least one offer in hand. They both have more than 3 years of experience in Technical Writing. If I recall, till October 2008, if you get 3 calls you could be having 2 offers in hand. Message seems to be loud and clear, but to believe in this, is to leave the hope of future. It is not only my friends alone, it could be even me …….. I am scared, disappointed, and worried.

But looking at the questions what one of my friends in one of the interview was asked, it looks as if it is pass time for the recruitment department of the organization. To keep the recruiters busy, job seekers are grilled without any outcome. The real requirement is difficult to analyze. At this point of time when the interviewer’s future is itself in dark, they shoot question such as ‘What is the future of Technical Writing in India?’ Another one asked, ‘Are American writers better or Indian?”

My friend, who faced the interview, did not know how to answer these questions. Nevertheless, till now a facade is created in India especially in software industry that technical writing has very good career and suddenly technical writers are to face this reality. When you do not have job in hand, can you say that this industry promises lots of opportunity for you. Secondly, American and Indians alike are on the firing line and every one may be in the hit list to be fired. Finding out, who is better, that too from a perspective job seeker is utter foolishness. One of the friend rightly once said, ‘Recruiters are now looking for Pankaj Mishra, Arvind Adiga and Arundhati Roy to be technical writers. May be they might ask even Salman Rushdie to do this job.’

I can understand, it was seer frustration but the way he has been treated makes him say so. The postmortem of these interviews presses you hard to do the soul searching, whether you have a place here or not. Well, to say a little about the recruiters, they are nuts and they can pose any sort of questions to you without they themselves even knowing the answer. At a time they feel they are great and they can screw any person during the interview. But tide will turn, if you don not realize the value of good assets now, in the good time they will not recognize you. I mean your organization. These are passing phases and good turn in economy is expected. The crux is how well you can help job seeker contain their aspiration and motivate them to keep their hope alive. Of course technical writing will remain existent even though some of the technical writers find it tough or struggle to get a job. India is emerging as a promising destination for software industry and it will continue to evolve even in documentation. These are just testing time.

Peer Review in Writing

I do not hesitate to say that all writers love their writing and because they love their writing they produce some good write-up for their audience to read. Anyways, however good is the write-up, writers are expected to have some message from the readers. May be good, bad or ugly, but they are sure to get some reviews. It is obvious that readers when they read, they look from their own perspective and the writers when they write, they tend to write from their own perspective. But, true writers write from their reader’s perspective and live in their characters. However, this is an issue of subjective discussion and opinion would entirely differ from reader to reader and from writer to writer.

There would be some readers who would proclaim writer's work as piece of rubbish, non-standard, anti-social, anti-national or whatsoever it may be. There would be some readers who would applaud and appreciate the courageous, bold, emphatic writing bringing truth out. These are two kinds of rave reviews writers are ought to get on their work. These are again based on the wish of the writers to choose the subject to discuss in their writings. Yet, whatever writers write, they truly adore their writings and to be the subject of criticism and ridicule is at time not digestible for them.

The question is, being a writer, how can you save yourself from the criticism. No, you can not, and its better you start accepting criticism and understanding the message of your readers or else there will be a time when there will be no message for you. It is true that only when you are read, you have messages. It is also true that you are writing because you are being read and you are writing for your readers. My friend, ‘Roy Arsenal’ rightly once said, “if you want to write your own thing better buy a diary from the market and write but if you are writing for an audience understand them and write for them."

This challenge always bothers writers. What is the way out? Love your writing but do not hesitate to share with your peer and friends who can lend some input and peer review in to your work. It is better to be ridiculed and criticized and shape and reshape your write-up before you produce that to your audience. A true and honest peer review is always good for your writing. The bigger challenge is to find a good and competent peer, who will review your work. But, whoever you are handing out your work, they will have at least their own angle to look into it. At least that input will help you a lot.

As a writer many people wants to try out writing many different things. To some extent you can be good in writing one specialize areas of writing but you need not be good at all things altogether. This depends on the choice of your writing. Some are good in writing poetry, story, report, extempore, essay and many other forms of writing but none can be perfect in all sorts. Yes, but no harm in trying your hands as a writer. Well, you can fall on your peer to give you a good and critical advice to bring out a good second draft.

Yes! I am hoping my story to come out good because I have got a brilliant piece of unbiased review from my friend ‘Roy Arsenal’. This is my first try to write a story.

Problem and prospect of being in Technical Writing

I must tell the truth that I didn’t jump into technical writing because I love it. It will not be appropriate even to say that I knew the truth about technical writing before joining the job. In fact, before landing in technical writing career, I had gone through some of the articles published on the net which gives little insight about the job. The transition from my writing career to technical writing was consciously based on the pay cheque it offered. The organization, which hired me first for the job saw the potential of I becoming a successful technical writer. Whereas, I was not very sure of myself, whether I could make good use of my writing skills for the hired role.

Lot of questions kept haunting my mind till I joined the job. Well, first month passed smoothly attending different trainings and analyzing role and work. Job was much easier for me than I had expected to be. And it was not the place where I had to demonstrate the art of writing for attracting my readers and add value to increase volume of sales for the periodicals, as I worked for in the past years. The work is to write simple, grammatical error free English, following the style guidelines for the content structure and formatting. Obviously, it is more of a mechanical job than writing per-se.

Now that I am a technical writer I often wonder what could be the road map of technical writing in the future and to gather some of the free information available on the net I came across an article written by Joann T Hackos, Fellow, Rocky Mountain Chapter, STC, titled, “Trends for 2000: Moving Beyond the Cottage”, which meticulously looks into the problem and prospects of industry in which the technical writers are employed. The writer precisely quotes the transition of technical writing from a cottage industry to a global business. I find it worth to summarize the concept and central idea of the article for the benefit of my fellow technical writers.

Cottage industry employees craftsmen and artisans who work in the small groups or independently and the arts and craftsmanship is an individual skills rather than a trait, which can be taught and people can be trained hands-on. Similar situation presently works even for the technical writing, where the technical writers work in small groups or independently on some products. Undoubtedly, the reflection of the their writing is the reflection of individual craftsmanship in their documents. Further to analyze the individual craftsmanship in writing, the article digs into some of the glaring problem the technical writers face.

Pressure to keep staffing low results in too few technical communicators to allow everyone to craft individual books and help files. Because of limitations on hiring and restrictions on number of personnel, organizations have entrusted some of their needs for additional people during peak periods by hiring contractors. The use of technical writer contractors will continue. However, at present, the industry is experiencing an increase in the number of permanent positions that companies hope to fill because of high and continued long-term demand for technical communication. In the current high-growth economy, the trend toward more in-house positions should continue, but the need for short-term contractors will also remain high.

Many technical communicators complain about the number of tools they have to learn. Unfortunately, there is no rest. The delivery technologies that are available to us continue to change and continue to display a frustrating lack of standards. Everything works differently everywhere. As a result, there is an increase in the number of organizations using production specialists to handle the technologies of final delivery to customers. Not only has the diversity of delivery methods contributed to increasing specialization, but also ignoring the importance of good content development. In an ideal situation, more than 75 percent of an individual communicator’s time is taken up by page design and final page production. Less than 25 percent of the time is devoted to user analysis and content development.

The need to interact with the engineering or programming teams often precludes working at home for long periods. In fact, there will be a decrease in opportunities for large-scale telecommuting because of the increasing use of information databases and the need for information reuse. Technical communicators who need to work closely with marketing, support, development, and consulting team members to better understand customers cannot be “home alone.”

Product-development schedules that are getting shorter and shorter in response to competitive pressures mean that our organizations need to find ways to eliminate process steps or decrease the amount of time we take to perform them. The simplest way to do so is through technology. Many departments have learned that, if we can automate production steps through technology, we can shorten cycle time without risking quality.

The need to help customers adopt our products to their industries means technical communicators must take responsibility for gaining domain and customer knowledge in addition to understanding the technology. At present, many technical communicators work closely with developers to understand the product and capture product specifications. In increasingly conservative markets, we have new roles to play, showing customers how products will affect their work. In other words, users don’t necessarily want to know what the product can do; they want to know how to do what they want to do.

Except for a few holdouts and a few organizations that are sensitive to customers’ needs for paper, we have experienced a complete transition to electronic delivery. Most of that delivery, however, has taken the form of book files saved as PDFs onto CD-ROMs or Websites. Cost savings rather than utility are still driving electronic delivery. This can be counter-productive, especially in global markets where Web access is not ubiquitous.

The dramatic increase in interest in single sourcing and documentation databases represents recognition that the cost savings from electronic delivery of information have already been achieved. Organizations are looking for additional means to reduce costs: information reuse, dynamic updating, decreased production times, decreased development times as a result of standardization, and so on. That means a reorganization of the technical writer’s environment. No longer technical writers work independently, responsible for crafting whole books. We need to work as teams, with some members responsible for technical content, some for customer requirements, and others for design and innovation.

The demand for skilled designers, knowledgeable about user needs and design issues; to participate on product design teams is already very high in innovative companies. This evolving role requires people who have learned a lot about design, work well in a cross-functional environment and are willing and eager to keep learning. People who do well in this heady atmosphere tend not to be typical technical writers.

Taking Business Perspective, it should be obvious that we take a strong business perspective on our future in technical communication. If we most value individual craftsmanship, there will be places where our skills will continue to be welcome. But we may well be missing out on the major paradigm shift and the greatest challenges we face. The choice is naturally ours