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Subject:Re: Techwriting after the boom From:Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 6 Jun 2003 08:16:47 -0700 (PDT)
"Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com> wrote in message news:201349 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-
> Yes it does. But the microprocessor revolution created a temporary bubble
> within which there were lots of complex and immature home/office products
> being delivered into a marketplace in which there was few social networks of
> information to help people. This created a temporary boom in demand for
> technical communicators, especially for technical communicators of with only
> modest technical backgrounds. This boom went on long enough that it reshaped
> the way people look at the occupation of technical communication, how it was
> taught, how people were recruited, and who was encouraged to pursue it.
I emphatically AGREE! The 90s created a tech comm profession where technical
and scientific skills were relegated to a secondary or tertiary consideration.
This was partially because a lot of low-end consumer documentation was needed
and because a lot of unqualified tech writers were flooding into the industry.
It also saw the rise of the SME (Subject Matter Expert) as a concept. Writers
were told that they didn't need to posess good tech skills, this was the SMEs
job. A writer merely needed to reformat an SME's work.
> And now we are returning to normal. There is a need for technical
> communication across a broad range of industries. Most of it is industrial
> in nature, rather then consumer oriented, which is the normal state of
> things. Overall, the size of the market is no doubt significantly larger,
> thanks to the myriad industrial applications of the microprocessor. But
> right now we have a huge glut of Technical Communicators left over from the
> bubble. Many of them have the wrong profile for the mostly industrial tech
> writing jobs that are the majority of positions in a normal market. There is
> a similar glut of training programs and schools, and their programs are, I
> suspect, similarly skewed. All this is throwing off the market, and it will
> probably take a long time for the effects to sort themselves out and for the
> market, and the profile of the occupation of technical communicator, to
> readjust to normal conditions.
Again, I agree. Its also very refreshing to see this argument out here.
The adjustment will take a long time. Many writers are leaving the profession,
many are giving up. I left tech writing about 4 years ago. It was simply to
hard to make a decent living and run a business off of tech writing. There are
just too many morons and too few jobs.
Andrew Plato
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