Technical Writer

The last month has been so flat-out busy at work that I haven’t had time to post. Funnily enough, this busyness in my department is not reflected in the whole business. Or rather, everyone is busy, but it’s only because we have less people to do the same amount of work. Things are slowing down, and not in a good way.

If you have been reading the newspapers anywhere in the Western world lately you can’t help but notice that the stock market has dropped. A lot. More than a lot.

I work in the financial services sector. The company I work for gets most of their money from in fees from funds under administration—usually from the market value of shares and funds that we manage. 80% of the company costs are people costs, the other 20% are building and infrastructure. When share prices drop by 20-25%, our funds under administration also drop by 20-25%, which means the company income also drops by 20-25%. We can’t cut infrastructure costs, we can only cut people costs, and our department was one of the first.

Back in the dot com bust I found that tech writers were often the first to go. After all, developers can write documents, but tech writers can’t write code, can they. Or so the thinking goes. I was rather surprised I wasn’t asked to leave this time.

It’s made me think more about the future though. I am currently in a permanent job, and have consequently been less careful about putting money aside than I had been in prior years. When I was contracting I used to put aside enough money for three months to tide me over non-contract periods, and I had income protection insurance in case something went badly wrong. I also paid my credit card in full every month.

I dropped the income protection when the price of the policy doubled in 12 months, then doubled again the following year. But as for my emergency money to tide me over until the next contract, or even paying off the credit card in full—when did I stop doing that? When did I stop noticing that I had stopped doing that?

In down times like this the per-hour rates for technical writers also drop. Now, more than ever, it pays to have skills that employers want. XML, modular content, web 2.0, Office 2007 rather than 2003, and so on. A technical writer who could get by before with minimal, older skills will soon be competing against a lot more people for the same job.

Now is a good time, I think, for most technical writers to take a long hard look at any contingency plans they have; and to update their skills to make them more marketable. Just in case.

Last Modified : August 2nd, 2008
Filed under : Tech Writer
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