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Ratio of Programmers (or Manuals) to Writers in Software
Subject:Ratio of Programmers (or Manuals) to Writers in Software From:gina jerome <gina -at- ROARK -dot- ITG -dot- TI -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 3 Apr 1995 12:25:03 -0500
For the record, we at Tivoli have five full time writers and one doc'
coordinator supporting a staff of approximately 60+ developers, and I
think everyone would agree that we are swamped. My previous experience
also indicates that a ratio of 10:1 is indeed a *MAXIMUM* ratio.
A couple of interesting questions: how many writers are practicing
nationwide? and how many developers are they supporting? At one time
Kevin Harper (a tivoli writer) and I looked at the national STC
registration and I believe we decided there were approximately 30,000
registered members. A rough guess for total technical writers might be
50,000.
I wish more information about this subject was available. It would be
good to be able to estimate what the demand for writers *should* be. It
would then be a little easier to estimate whether the current salary
figures posted by STC are appropriate.
