Re: TC vs TW

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

No, because you've wandered over into an entirely different
discussion you may have missed (and in which I have ruffled
other peoples' feathers here from time to time).

It is entirely possible, if not downright likely, that a very large
portion of the jobs currently held by technical writers who do
not possess specialized educations and experience in the
fields they are writing about (in other words, technical writers
with backgrounds in English, journalism and "communications"
rather than in engineering, science and other "technical"
areas) will be widely outsourced and offshored.  If that
happens I doubt it will take ten years, and the nonwriting
"communicator" jobs that I predicted will degrade to hourly
support jobs will follow to wherever the "nontechnical" technical
writer jobs end up (everybody today worries about India, but
I think ten years from now India will be looking for someplace
to offshore as well).

My model for someone wiith decent longterm professional
prospects (either as an in-house employee or a successful
self-employed vendor/consultant) is someone with hands-on
experience as an engineer, scientist, project manager,
programmer, service technician, etc., plus what you're
teaching under the "communications" program.  Anyone
else is seriously at-risk for being unemployable except
as an hourly worker

I'll raise the stakes and bet a dinner on that one.

Gene Kim-Eng



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Hailey" <david -dot- hailey -at- usu -dot- edu>

I would be happy to bet but what you have said makes no sense. Your bet 
is based on a bunch of conflicting points, some of which will be true 
and some of which will not be true.

I'll bet on these:

Over the next years, the role of technical writer (especially 
documentation specialists) will be increasingly outsourced, insourced, 
and offshored -- 1 lunch, payable in 5 years.

In ten years the vast majority of fulltime technical writing jobs with 
benefits will be gone, they will be contracted -- another lunch in 10 
years.

How's that?  Bet?

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