Rajdeep Gupta, a successful tech writer here in town and assistant organizer of the Bangalore TechWriters Meetup, was nice enough to spend his lunch hour with me and answer some of my questions about the state of the profession here in Bengalooru.We discussed the training that tech writers go through here, the types of jobs that are available, and the effect of the world-wide recession on the profession here. Rajdeep was curious about the attitude of westerners toward tech writers and their work that is outsourced from the U.S. to India.
Rajdeep said several interesting things during our discussion:
- Thirty percent (30%) of technical writers working in Bengalooru, in his opinion, are software programmers who have gone over to writing more than programming. These writers are paid more money that the other 70% who have a language background rather than a programming background.
- Private institutes that offer training for technical writers tend to run 2 or 3 month training sessions. These institutes tend to be "tool heavy." In the parlance this means that they emphasize training on software that writers use such as Adobe Robohelp for creating online help systems or Arbortext for XML editing more than writing training.
Since I do not understand the educational system in India, however, it is difficult for me to draw any conclusions about the way this finding revealed in the article might reflect on the technical writing institutes here in Bengalooru.Note: Perhaps one of the folks more knowledgeable than I who is following this blog could help us out here in the comments.
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