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Greetings from Mumbai, India! I have worked with several US companies on
a telecommuting basis. So I will provide you a perspective from this
side. Barry Cliver has put the other perspective so well!
My experience is:
A) Standards in USA are pretty high.
B) Work goes on smoothly because we (they?) have well documented style
guides and templates.
C) We have several excellent user guides as role models. So it is easy
to emulate them.
D) Face to face meetings are not possible and virtual chats and
conference calls are the second best thing that we can use. So these
expenses are going to go up.
E) We have weekly meetings in the form of virtual chats. This helps to
check up on schedule.
F) Email communication is a blessing.
In case you have concerns about Quality, it will depend upon the
offshored writers that you get. My own feeling is that you need not
worry. A large pool of our technical writers write for the best
companies in the world. Most of us are members of STC. The STC India
Chapter is 5 years old and has won the Distinguished Chapter award.
INDUS, our newsletter, won an award too. Many of us have attended STC
and other conferences in USA and other parts of the world. We hold our
own STC India Chapter Annual Conference in December (2 and 3 this year)
and invite an American speaker! Do send your team and also try to be
here with them!
I am not sure whether American English will be so much of a concern. You
are there to guide, right. This may not be a strong point. My biggest
compliment (few days back) was when an established writer from Canada
recommended me for an editing assignment, which required a Native
English writer.
One problem is of course the day-night issue! I have sometimes received
phone calls at 11 pm, Midnight or had to log in at 8 am in the morning.
Likewise, my managers would log in at home in the night to chat with us
(our morning)! The time difference is sometimes an advantage and
sometimes a disadvantage.
I also feel that you should come to India and get a first-hand rapport
with your team here. Similarly, you can get some of us there so that we
get to know you and your work culture better.
Guru http://www.documentorg.com/default.htm
Send an email to documentorg-subscribe -at- topica -dot- com to receive my
DocuMentorG columns for newbie technical writers in India.
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