Tech Writer Lawsuit?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

John Posada excerpted a telling commentary from the article: "...if  
the plaintiffs were to win this case, and any subsequent appeal, he  
would advise his high-tech clients to move their technical writers  
out of the state..." John added: <<or out of the country?>>

Possibly, but more likely this is just the standard lawyer ploy of  
sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's sufficiently popular they  
even have an acronym for it: FUD.

Companies that offshore their work often learn a hard lesson: that  
none of their former employees, or anyone who likes their former  
employees, will ever again buy a product from that company. The  
reductio ad absurdum is that once all North American jobs have been  
moved to developing countries, and even the drive-through window at  
McDonald's is staffed by a robot teleoperated by someone in Kolkata  
or Guanzhou, all us unemployed North Americans won't have any money  
to buy their products. Karma isn't optional.

They also often learn the lesson, as Dell did with its technical  
support service, that quality has a price, and if you allocate work  
based solely on price, the quality inevitably suffers. This problem  
goes away in time, but the initial problems can leave lasting damage.

The larger problem, and one that we can't solve, is that offshore  
techwhirlers are just as smart as we are, and all they lack is time  
and education and practice to come up to our level. You can't fight  
the wage differential when that happens. This means it's time for all  
of us to start working on Plan B for our careers. We may never need  
it, but it's foolish to work without it.

>

----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
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