Technical writing situations in China (part two)
Industry reception
Technical writing is a relatively new career in China and has not gained enough attention even in nowadays. The reason is simple: the companies outsouring R&D missions are attracted by the low overhead cost in the first place instead of the quality of work. If the salary of foreign engineers climbs to a degree that makes them feel "not worthy of outsourcing", outsourcing will die. (Personally I am worried about the recent inflation rate which might drive most ITers out of job in the end.) However, technical writer's mission is to ensure the quality of customer information, and that's why we feel frustrated and discouraged at some time.
Major Obstucles
It is not surprising that SME turns down the interview request with writers, skip review meeting, slag comments until last minute before sign-off, what is even worse is such incidents may be ignored by the management team. In many organizations, documentation is not integrated as part of development project and technical writers are percepted as the men in the corner writing things that no one is likely to read. To many engineers, technical writer is responsible for formatting, spelling/language check, PDF production, that's all. Thus the support from higher management is critical factor to enforce the quality of the document, which is repeatly proved in my assignments. In short, writer proposes, manager disposes.
Writer's missions
However, as professional communicators, we shall not limit ourselves at the engineer level and leave the information drifting with the loosely controled stream. Technical writer is responsible for ensuring the correctness and completeness of information and thus the efforts to make role and mission visible and acknowledged shall be accounted into working scope. There are discussions for years about revising the identity from "writer" to "communicator" and even to "strategist", however in most cases what defines us in the organization is what we do but not the title.
