RE: Techwriting after the boom

["Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com>]

DaLy wrote:

> It appears to me that from Mark's original post and
> several of the replies that followed, Technical
> Writing/Documentation is being squished into the "High
> Tech" two-by-four foot box.

Not at all. My contention is that there has always been a need for technical
writers. A few of them document home/office products (of all kinds). More
document industrial products (of all kinds). Much technical communication is
also done by scientists and engineers communicating with each other. That is
the stable state of the industry.

> Every industry/business
> requires some kind of technical documentation.

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.

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.




---
Mark Baker
Senior Technical Writer
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com

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