Business Word

Does Globalization Spell Trouble for Technical Writers?
The Negative Effects of Free Trade May Not Be Limited to the Manufacturing Sector

by Peter Zvalo

In the past 20 years we have witnessed an unprecedented shift in where and how work is carried out. The elimination of countless manufacturing jobs in North America and Europe, and the simultaneous relocation of those jobs to third-party contractors in developing nations is well documented. Such jobs are currently performed by an estimated 27 million people worldwide — many of them young women in their teens or twenties earning as little as 13 cents an hour.

As I described in the Spring 2000 issue of this column, the nature of work for traditionally white-collar professions such as technical writing, is also changing. While a growing number of professional writers is opting for the life of the freelancer, and enjoying the freedom and earning potential that this lifestyle can provide, many permanent full-time writing positions are being eliminated when work is delegated to temporary or contract workers.

Part of a Larger Trend

This trend is part of a much larger phenomenon in which companies attempt to reduce the corporate payroll by not only contracting out the services of individuals but that of entire corporate functions (thus allowing the company to focus on its "core competencies"). For technical writers and other communications specialists such a trend is worrisome because documentation is widely regarded as a support function that is easily outsourced to individuals or consulting firms. A recent labour study in California’s Silicon Valley revealed that between 27 and 40 percent of the Valley’s employees are "contingency workers"—  part-timers, temps, and contractors. 

Microsoft, for example, is leading the way to create a virtually "employee-less corporation," a jigsaw puzzle of outsourced divisions, contract factories, and freelance employees. In its drive to get rid of the corporation’s "useless fixed assets" — anything that falls outside the core functions of programming and product development — Microsoft now employs between 4,000 and 5,750 temporary and contract workers, not including people who are employed by "vendors" who have taken over some key corporate functions (Pitney Bowes, which took over the mail room; Xerox, which manages the print and copy centre; and KAO Information Systems, which operates the CD-ROM factory). While technical documentation has not been fully outsourced, many writers at Microsoft and elsewhere are not in-house employees but rather contractors. However, some firms, in keeping with the employee-less philosophy, are experimenting with the idea of outsourcing their entire documentation function. 

Just how far corporations such as Microsoft will go in outsourcing most, if not all, of their documentation needs remains to be seen. However, it must be said that documentation does seem particularly well suited as an outsource function. The creation of good technical documentation is an expensive, labour-intensive task that many software firms would rather do without. While it supports the company’s product, it does nothing in terms of functionality or pizzaz for the actual software. Few, if any, customers base their buying decision on the quality or completeness of a user manual or online help. Secondly, thanks to the power of technology — file transfer protocol, e-mail, and the World Wide Web — a writer need not perform the majority of work onsite. Rather than consuming valuable office space and other resources at a company’s R & D facility, it is obviously beneficial to have contract writers working from home or from the offices of a consulting firm. Most of the communication between the writer and client can take place electronically: from interviewing subject-matter experts, to submission of drafts, to receiving client reviews of drafts.

How Real Is the Threat?

In the short term, this type of arrangement can seem like a win-win proposition: the software company saves money on documentation through reduced overhead, while the contract writer earns more on an hourly basis than if he or she were a permanent employee. But the future may be less bright for the contractor. As corporations have abundantly demonstrated in the relocation of their manufacturing activities to so-called export processing zones of developing nations — where labour is cheap and labour standards are all but non-existent — their commitment to the well-being of existing workers falls far short of their commitment to satisfy the short-term demands of their shareholders.

Of one thing we can be certain: companies will continue to look for new ways to become more "competitive," that is, produce greater quantities of product using fewer, and cheaper, resources. And with transnational corporations having few ties with, or loyalties to, any one country, the search for inexpensive labour in developing countries is likely to intensify. Thanks to reliable and instantaneous electronic means of communication with any corner of the world, the day when traditionally white-collar activities such as technical writing will be contracted out overseas may not be far away. As evidenced by e-mail messages that I have received from writers looking for contract work from such places as India and Singapore, writers will not just be competing with others within their immediate communities, but rather with writers from nations with substantially lower standards of living — and wages. If these arrangements prove to be feasible, writers could soon be scrambling to undercut each other in order to win contracts for such companies as Microsoft on a worldwide basis. Under such circumstances we can be certain that a writer in a developing country earning a fraction of what his or her counterpart in Canada, the United States, or Europe would demand, would have a definitive advantage.

Perhaps the saving grace for technical writers and editors is that there will never be a significant threat from countries whose first language is not English. And even in those countries where English is widely spoken, regional dialects may prove to be too big an obstacle for writers in those countries to mask. The "Microsoft style" of technical writing is basically a North American style, not easily replicated by someone with only a textbook knowledge of North American English.

While it may be technologically feasible to contract out writing services to the lowest bidder on a worldwide basis — and a strong business case can be made that this would save companies money — the creative aspects of technical writing are likely to prevent such a shift from occurring on a large scale. Technical writers and other communications specialists should be aware of the potential threats to their livelihoods, but until there is a global standard for the English language, such threats appear to be distant.

Peter Zvalo is a Contributing Editor for Writer’s Block.