atw: Re: Accreditation

It's not "finding a job" I'd be worried about -- it's whether there's any 
future in it.

When I first got involved with technical communication 20 years ago, I thought 
it 
would provide the solution to a lot of problems. It still could -- but those 
problems 
aren't the ones management seem to want to know about any more.

Of course that's an over-generalisation. But the current socio-economic climate 
(we live in an economy, not in a society; companies only have responsibility to 
shareholders, not to customers or suppliers or employees) means that 
managers are more motivated by PYA than by questions of product quality and 
usability. Mind you, I do think that accreditation would be attractive from the 
managerial point of view -- for the following reason.

Just as someone noted a day or two ago, the casualisation of the workforce 
has transferred time management risk from employers to employees. Many other 
changes -- for example, self-assessment in tax returns, and fewer tellers and 
longer queues in banks -- are also about shifting costs and risks. If a manual 
is 
written by an accredited professional, and someone loses a limb (or their life) 
because of an error in the manual, the product manufacturer will be able to 
hide 
behind the author. As it is, employees are fairly safe, and most contractors 
are 
only marginally at risk because (as indicated by the "Alineation of Personal 
Services Income" legislation) they are not very different from employees in 
terms of their responsibility for the end product. Accreditation just might 
turn that 
situation around -- but I wonder whether technical communicators would derive 
benefits comparable to the additional risks (not to mention the prohibitive 
insurance premiums).

> It'd be easier to find a job if the hairdressers weren't employed as tech
> writers.



Michael Lewis

--------------------------------------
Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia
www.brandle.com.au
--------------------------------------


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