Today’s Quotes of the Day blog included this one:
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s ‘St. Matthew’s Passion’ on a ukulele.
Ben Bagdikian is, among other things the former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His newest publication seems to be The New Media Monopoly.
This article from Information Week about the Deloitte survey entitled Calling A Change In The Outsourcing Market points out:
The problems execs from the largest companies have with outsourcing are
twofold, Ken Landis, Deloitte’s senior strategy principal, says in an interview.
First, manufacturing outsourcing–born in the shadow World War II–served as the
pattern for IT and business-process outsourcing, but the dynamics of the two are
vastly different and can’t be duplicated, he says. Second, services outsourcing
came to the fore during a recession, and the economy isn’t in an economic
decline these days. In a recession, he says, cost saving is a prime corporate
motivation. But when the economy is growing, other factors such as customer
satisfaction and growth compete with controlling costs, and outsourcing services
limit a company’s control over those matters. "They see outsourcing creating a
structural disadvantage," Landis says.
[reposting with spelling correction]
An entry in Dan Gillmor’s blog brings my attention to this entry in Ed Foster’s Gripelog:
Diluted Documentation
Are
IT product vendors deliberately watering down the amount of information
they provide in their documentation? Not only do a growing number of
readers seem to think so, they have some interesting theories as to why
reading the feeble manual no longer does much good.
. . .
Many readers think the main reason for
shortchanging customers on the documentation is to give the vendor a
lucrative aftermarket.
. . .
Another reader, himself a technical editor, had a
somewhat different theory. "This is a by-product of the outsourcing
trend," he wrote.
[One of the comments in Dan’s blog also points us to an article from 1998: "The Death of Documentation."]
Speaking as a reformed software developer — one who spent some 17 years building software and now has spent over 22 years explaining (other) software — I have some other observations.
No wonder Silicon Valley area STC membership took a big drop in recent years.
According to an article by Scott Thurm in the Wall Street Journal of October 8, 2004,
More than half of the people working at technology companies in California in early 2000 had left the technology field or the state by the end of 2003, and more than 40% experienced declining incomes over that period, according to a study on the impact of the tech bust.
The study, by the Sphere Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Burlingame, Calif., think tank, found that the fate of tech workers during the bust depended largely on whether they stayed employed at a tech firm. Those that did enjoyed rising incomes — up 11% after accounting for inflation. But workers who left tech for other industries saw their wages stagnate or decline. Those who shifted from semiconductor makers to health care, for example, made 31% less in the fourth quarter of 2003, compared with the first quarter of 2000, after accounting for inflation.
…Nearly one-third of the tech workers in California in early 2000 weren’t even working in the state in 1995, and an additional quarter were working at nontech firms. Those who weren’t in tech in 1995 were more likely to leave the industry, or the state, after 2000, the study found
The full text of the article is behind the WSJ subscription wall, but was brought to my attention by a mailing list. A fairly simple Google search turned it up here.
By now you are probably aware that there is a bunch of blogging going on at Microsoft. There is even a weblog named Technical Careers @ Microsoft staffed by talent scouts Zoe Goldring (degree in anthropology) and Gretchen Ledgard (degree in English Lit.).
There is also a marketing recruiting blog run by Heather Hamilton, whose degree is in Business Administration.
Heather had a recent posting entitled Watch out for “Sales and Marketing” which reminded me of a story:
In the 1980s, when I was an employee of Tandem Computers, they had a “Philosophy Department” which offered an extensive corporate program of education. I attended one class that they ran periodically called “Know Your Customer.” In this one-day class, employees from a wide range of roles in the company gathered to meet and interact with real, live customers. The first exercise in this class was for each participant to tell who they were and what their job was.
When one employee said he was in Marketing, a number of attendees made the typical faces and noises.
The gentleman politely informed us that we had confused Marketing with Sales.
“Let me explain the difference between the two jobs,” he said. “Salespeople tell lies. Marketing people make things up.”
The ITtoolbox charactrizes itself as the
IT Knowledge & Support Network
It has a weblogs section called ITtoolbox Blogs.
One of the features is IT Outsourcing: Special Coverage from the Front Line
The debate surrounding IT outsourcing is heating up. To help provide an in-depth, real-world view of the issues and impacts of this phenomenon, ITtoolbox Blogs is now featuring special coverage on offshoring, highlighting firsthand experiences and front line perspectives of ITtoolbox Blog authors from across the globe.
I’ll be reading this blog….
The ITtoolbox charactrizes itself as the
IT Knowledge & Support Network
It has a weblogs section called ITtoolbox Blogs.
One of the features is
IT Outsourcing: Special Coverage from the Front Line
The debate surrounding IT outsourcing is heating up. To help provide an in-depth, real-world view of the issues and impacts of this phenomenon, ITtoolbox Blogs is now featuring special coverage on offshoring, highlighting firsthand experiences and front line perspectives of ITtoolbox Blog authors from across the globe.
The April-May issue of Sound Off, the newsletter of the Puget Sound chapter of STC, brings two articles that I found interesting:
Certification for technical communicators: The time is now — by Peggy Jacobson
and
Think weird and prosper — by Rahel Bailie.
Peggy opines that it is time (yea, past time) for STC to support certification for technical communicators. She cites other similar organizations that have done so. Why not STC?
Sure, there are lots of different kinds of TCs, but some skills are universal. Also, there can be a baseline certification and the speciality certifications, or some folks might get just the baseline, then a certification in the area of their primary audience, such as Oracle or Microsoft programming.
Rahel quotes from Tom Peters:
“The only way to effect true transformation in the workplace is to enlist the outliers in your organization to your cause. Find the weirdos and the freaks, offer support for the projects they’re secretly pursuing, then get them to help you with your own revolutionary change ideas.”
She recounts how she has used “weirdness” to differentiate herself as a technical communicator and even to defuse road rage.
I wonder how one might apply these two concepts together….
Thanks to Scott Abel, aka The Content Wrangler, for the tip about Peggy’s article which led me to discover Rahel’s.
A student from India posted on SlashDot about the state of US education and attitude.
I come here and notice that being smart or good is being made fun of - this, despite the fact that I’m in one of the US’s top engineering schools. The ones with the social life are the ones who show off or the ones who throw ball. Even here, being really smart or nerdy is looked down. People do not respect the need for some of us to be introverted and reclusive, and people are branded as obnoxious or stereotyped as nerds or geeks, most often in a derogatory manner.
Am I bitter? Absolutely.
I come from an environment where both my parents went to grad school, half the people in my family are PhDs and my uncle is a quantum physicist at CERN. When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to be a physicist or a mathematician. Social life was not an issue, it was always a given.
This is not just about his social life — it is an indictment of our society’s attitude towards technologists in general.
A signifcant number of comments follow the main item cited in Slashdot. Check it out.
[A story reprinted from a well-known business daily]
U.S. Tax Code Provisions
Encourage Offshore Jobs
As if U.S. workers didn’t have enough going against them. Turns out there really are provisions in the tax code that seem to encourage sending jobs offshore.
…
The tax code is written in a way that allows companies not to pay the full 35% U.S. corporate tax rate on foreign income when that money remains invested overseas.
…
“Brilliant,” you say, “a U.S. corporate tax cut will end the incentive to go abroad.”
Not so fast. As the biggest and best economy in the world, the U.S. is a price maker. We set the standard. A U.S. tax cut might only ignite an international game of tax chicken where all the Lowtaxistans cut their rates below our new, lower rate.
Of course, the revenue will have to be made up elsewhere, which would mean higher individual taxes.