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I am from India and I don't know much about the rest of the world. I
have travelled and worked extensively in the US though. I would like
to add my thoughts to this:
An anonymous poll throws up some strange results, just like a
pre-election poll, a poll on which car has the highest fan-following
with suburban moms, who likes Tom Cruise, or which Harry Potter is
your favorite . . .
A lot of people don't participate in these polls and those who do, are
free to answer any which way. For example, the Delhi suburb where I
live and work has at least 200 writers and out of that number, only 11
participated! God alone knows which 11 and what level they were at or
which company they were in?
The survey showed a city paying the highest, does it mean that ANY
writer there gets more then any other writer with the same skills else
where? I doubt that.
In India the salary ranges are really wide and varied. The same
company might give me X amount and another writer with the same
experience less or more. It is NOT a transparent deal, again I speak
from my own experience. 10 years - 3 jobs. A person doing the SAME
work even with better quality might get paid lesser than a more
seasoned writer.
Many companies and HR are yet to think of TW as a value-adding
function, though I do at times realize that just formatting a document
or writing procedures doesn't quite get you the mega-bucks! Some
hiring managers and HR are just bedazzled by the buzz-words, SGML,
single-sourcing, html help, .... Once you get a salary there is no
looking back. All the next jobs do is pay more and more and more. I am
sure that gets maxed out after a few years or you get labelled a
grass-hopper!
Getting a good deal is all about being at the right place at the right
time, which I always seem to miss out on!
And yes, it is possible that newbie's gets 1/7th the salary of a
person with 7 or even 10 years of experience AND it is also possible
than someone with 5 years of experience gets twice the amount a person
with 15 years of experience gets!
It is very confusing esp. for us in the country :-)
In India, TW and instructional design are both acquired skills usually
on the job, not taught in colleges, though I am told that has started.
About the newbies getting dramatically less money, it's part of the
apprenticeship / training ideology. They expect to make up for it as
they go along their careers. Same goes for doctors, engineers,
dentists, interior decorators ....
And this profession has more females then guys esp. in India (I wonder
why?!). Girls (usually) stay at home with parents so the money they
get is usually just pocket money. They don't need to run homes.
I moved into the field after 3 years of being a technical trainer. I
used to keep adding examples, tests, ... stuff to the text books and
finally decided to work on the training material itself.
Again, it's all very very very varied. And maybe cause of these polls,
the overall salaries would go up or down and the next year's poll
might show another trend!
Cost of living is another series of posts - if anyone is considering
moving to India on an expat's salary, now is a good time!
(Did I confuse things even more?! )
My $0.02,
(It doesn't sound the same when I convert it to INR!)
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