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salary surveyWow. more on this later, but this was just too current to pass up. I’ve been hacking away at some research ever since Tom and Alan had a great off-topic discussion that began in the comments of Tom’s review of my podcast!
In short, if you want to retire in three years whether or not you like it, by all means it may come upon you, me, all of us.
From The State of Innovation in India - ReadWriteWeb:
…However, despite all these advantages and despite thousands of developers in India creating value for Western companies, where is India’s killer app? Where is the Microsoft or Google from India? Or being slightly less ambitious where is the Salesforce.com or YouTube from India?
…The fundamental issue in India is the risk/reward equation. It is simply too easy for a young developer in India to get paid a lot by an outsourcing firm; then enjoy being headhunted every year for more money.
…It is possible that when this comes back to some reality the motivation to innovate will come to young Indian developers (yes young; breakthrough technical innovation tends to come from people under 30).
This has been the story for some time but it is changing fast right now and we maybe reaching a tipping point related to innovation in India.
Updated Rebuttal:
I think the writer is hopeful, and it may actually come about that India dev teams start whupping up on US teams and create a Google but I think that they’re currently a victim of their success; the A students in class tended to keep their mouths shut and their heads down. It’s something I’ve heard my mom, a teacher since the late 1960s, often talk about, and it’s the carrot on the stick.
In other words, as the author says, the risk right now does not outweigh the reward of keeping quiet and collecting a check, then bouncing when a recruiter finds the bigger better deal. Not enough competition within India to create that innovative stress.
What limited exposure I’ve had in the past two years with Indian dev teams is largely the same A student concept. Although they are an extremely tight team they won’t buck the trend, they do the groupthink model and collect a paycheck at the end of the day. I hope I’m underestimating here, I can only base off of my limited, limited time with a team or two. And… well, let’s face it, dev teams and programmers are kinda like that everywhere.
But there’s something different with the Indian teams; they seemed to have almost godlike reverence/fear for the boss and when a concept was challenged (by me) eyes went to him before anyone answered, and the forthcoming answer was carefully weighed.
FYI, I didn’t see that with Ukrainian and Russian dev teams I’ve worked with. It was more in-your-face and confrontational, and they tended to face off with the boss if they thought they were right. Cultural? I’m unsure, these are merely observations.
Updated: Tech Comm US keep your resumes polished…
I think the outsourcing model applied to programming is one that large multinational companies are quickly going to apply to Technical Communication.
The question is solid because when you look at raising folks from thirteen years old speaking English and learning proper phraseology, and at sixteen to eighteen pipelining them through four years of college focusing on structure of English, you end up with your Indian TCS crowd. It’s a field with 20% - 30% annual salary growth, which shows that Indian Tech Writing is a demand driven enterprise right now.
It’s much cheaper to do so in India than America or the EU for that matter. Even Adobe states that 90% of their software used in India is pirated. (source later, I just read it, and am on my way out the door). So even if Adobe doesn’t adopt a services model (under their own name or under a dummy corporation) many many more companies will do so.
Therefore, since college loans are less in India, the cost of living is lower, and there is a services model that has been working for ten years, there is a disruption threat from India-based Tech Communicators into the Technical Communication marketplace.
Updated: Grinding the statistics shows us the same disparity of 7:1
Check out the salary survey for the STC India 2007 TechComm field.
Back in 2005 Bill Swallow had some good even handed comments on a newsgroup about the 2005 7:1 ratio US tech writer to Indian tech writer, such as it’s a voluntary survey.
This year it appeared to be 4:1 but… after reviewing the data this year I factored in several economic factors that brought it back near the same 7:1.
- Noting that the STC India US source has changed their source to Dept. of Labor (DoL) which trended $10k less per year than the STC US study, this reduced the US amount compared by $7000 per year.
- The economic growth in both countries also had a factor, and it was interesting that the dollar amounts were straight across, and not corrected for 2005 dollars vs 2007 dollars. The exchange rate in 2005 was 45 rupees to $1, in 2007 it was 40 rupees to $1. That’s 8% in change (rusty in math please correct me in comments) not accounted for.
So… internally ask yourself if you lost $7000 per year doing Tech Writing in the past year, because that’s the amount the DoL and STC disagree by. They probably disagree because the STC is voluntary, and those taking the survey may be consistently the same pay range.
If you didn’t lose money, you got a standard promotion/raise, etc. then the figures are off by $7000 projected, and that factors in about 12% difference in US wage. ($58k DoL vs $65k STC discontinued survey)
So you ADD the 12% from the missing STC salary trend and ADD the missing 5 rupees/dollar at 8% and you get 20% of the DoL $58k equalling… about $69k which we need to validate.
I validated it by crosschecking it with the existing STC trend and it checked within about .3%. That’s close enough to work.
I hate assumptions but we have to use one barring any specific indicator, it’s either subtract the $7k and don’t explain it or use marketable common sense (SWAG) and state that since nobody’s complaining about taking pay cuts, we all got compensated along where we expected last year, and the trend continues in Tech Comm Salaries.
STC India’s 55% growth = wrong, given economy rising across all levels
The 55% growth that STC India points to loses momentum when these factors are taken into account. There is still an income disparity, and 4:1 to 7:1 is a tremendous change. However…
Given the data as I refigured it, it appears that the salary still grew a healthy 33%. This is a nice 11% growth over the 22% 2005 figure (which may also be inaccurate if STC India didn’t figure in 2003’s rupee:dollar ration correctly) but that fits more sanely than an artificial increase in demand which would rationalize the 55% increase. It’s a bit slower trend, that 11%. 
Uncorrected it still points to somewhere between a low of 4:1 and corrected, a high of 7:1 which is the same figure it was two years ago, even with the rise in the rupee, even with the "rise in pay of 55%" over the 2005 survey.
So as far as I can tell, both US and Indian Tech Writers made more money this past year, and the ratio did not change, it is still just about 7:1.
That’s a savings of 75% (STC India’s uncorrected numbers) to 85.7% reduction in the SALARY, not the outsourcing total cost, brought by outsourcing Technical Communication to India. That’s a heavy economic incentive to offshore tech writing, if the quality holds up.
As I said previously, if you want to retire in three years whether or not you like it, by all means it may be coming. To all of us. Particularly if (just a theory now) Adobe throws their massive weight more into the services side of the house, where there’s tremendous profit on a continuous scale vs. simple software.
I think given the investment over the next five years, Indian Technical Writers will bring up their game enough to be a very hard opponent for real world dollars for stateside Technical Communicators.
I may be alone in this concern, although in her 2008 predictions, Sarah phrases something like it much more delicately.
Just for clarity, she doesn’t voice the Adobe theory, just the US Market needs to watch what’s going on. Or… she’s saying that we stateside Tech Communicators need get along better with global customers. It’s late as I edit this, I don’t know which.
Sarah’s words, speaking about her own business regarding global clients:
We have our fair share of customers in North America, but an increasing number of our clients are outside North America or have significant operations in multiple locations around the world.
The implications for technical communicators are global audiences, global customers (internal and external), and a requirement to work well with people from all over the world.
This is an area where I believe that U.S. communicators face some significant challenges.
Adobe avoids spending $1 billion in development Stateside
This is a big development and announcement. $200 million buys a lot in India. If you figure the cost savings at approximately 5 to 1 that’s $1 billion not spent in the American or European development market over the same five years. At 7 to 1 it’s $1.4billion.
Of course that means more shareholder value as long as they can make the profits still roll in from the development. It’s a great risk minimizing move for them, but what does it mean for us in Technical Communication? A better product… or increased competition from in-house trained Indian Technical Communicators?
From Adobe to invest $200m in five years-India Business-Business-The Times of India
The company’s business plans include expansion of capacity, increasing sales force, doing more R&D out of India and focusing on e-learning, online gaming and technical communication.
Already, 25-30% of Adobe’ worldwide R&D is being done from India. The company now plans to increase that share substantially. "We have already said we plan to invest $200 million in India in the next five years," says Naresh Gupta, MD Adobe India.
STC India Salary Survey Raw Data:
2007 STC India Salary Survey
2005 STC India Salary Survey
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