RE: Boeing Tech Pubs going offshore? (long)

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

Richard Lippincott wrote:

> My fear (and I admit I don't know the facts) is that Boeing may be in a
> situation similar to what GE is. Our office has a group of tech
> writers that
> includes a core group with extensive experience in hands-on engine
> maintenance. These are people who spent years building and repairing the
> engines they now write about. Other Lockheed Martin divisions hire tech
> writers from a pool of retiring aircraft mechanics and flight engineers.
> I'll bet Boeing does the same. The result is that the writers deeply know
> the subject matter, and are able to spot issues such as "If you want the
> change -here- then it's going to also affect systems covered
> -there-..."

Richard's post brings up a very important point about outsourcing in general
and job exporting in particular. While outsourcing is, in general, a normal
part of business development and economic growth, any individual instance of
it may be mistimed or misjudged. I don't know if this individual case is
mistimed and misjudged or not, but if it turns out that it is, then I think
we have to step back from the condemnation of corporate greed and ignorance
for a moment and consider what blame for this may lie at the feet of
technical writers themselves.

The experience and background that Richard describes for technical writers
at Lockheed Martin makes it pretty clear that they are highly specialized
people with a deep knowledge of a particular subject and an ability to
communicate about that subject to people whose knowledge, experience, and
training is similar to their own. I have been a technical writer for a dozen
years, but I know that I am not qualified for one of those jobs and I never
will be.

Yet we technical writers have, as a group, insisted that technical
communication is a unified discipline in which one can be trained and
educated, in which one can receive not merely a diploma, but even a
bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree. If management thinks that one
technical writer is as good as another, it is perhaps because technical
writers themselves have been preaching this message at the top of their
lungs for so many years.

We would be far more honest with ourselves, and far more honest with the
world, if we came out and said, firmly and unequivocally: technical
communication is a not a separate profession, it is a specialization within
each of many distinct fields. To be a technical writer in field X, one needs
first to be an expert practitioner in the field, and then have the ability
to write for the intended audience.

Yes, there are people with the title of "technical writer" (or one of its
variants) who are experts in publication and publication management, and
make no pretence to depth of subject matter expertise. They do a useful job,
no doubt, but a radically different job. They cannot replace the people that
Richard is describing, even if they do have the same title on their business
cards.

If Boeing is not simply replacing American technical writers with Chilean
technical writers, but is actually replacing experienced aircraft mechanics
and flight engineers with technical writer diploma graduates (and I don't
know if they are or not), then a significant portion of the blame for this
must lie with the technical writing community itself.

If management makes a mistake in painting all technical writers with the
same brush, then it is technical writers who put that brush in their hands
and dipped it in the paint.

---
Mark Baker
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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