Tech Writer Lawsuit?

Subject: Tech Writer Lawsuit?
From: Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>
To: techwr-l List <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, John Posada <jposada99 -at- gmail -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 08:13:03 -0400

John Posada excerpted a telling commentary from the article: "...if
the plaintiffs were to win this case, and any subsequent appeal, he
would advise his high-tech clients to move their technical writers
out of the state..." John added: <<or out of the country?>>

Possibly, but more likely this is just the standard lawyer ploy of
sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It's sufficiently popular they
even have an acronym for it: FUD.

Companies that offshore their work often learn a hard lesson: that
none of their former employees, or anyone who likes their former
employees, will ever again buy a product from that company. The
reductio ad absurdum is that once all North American jobs have been
moved to developing countries, and even the drive-through window at
McDonald's is staffed by a robot teleoperated by someone in Kolkata
or Guanzhou, all us unemployed North Americans won't have any money
to buy their products. Karma isn't optional.

They also often learn the lesson, as Dell did with its technical
support service, that quality has a price, and if you allocate work
based solely on price, the quality inevitably suffers. This problem
goes away in time, but the initial problems can leave lasting damage.

The larger problem, and one that we can't solve, is that offshore
techwhirlers are just as smart as we are, and all they lack is time
and education and practice to come up to our level. You can't fight
the wage differential when that happens. This means it's time for all
of us to start working on Plan B for our careers. We may never need
it, but it's foolish to work without it.

>

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Follow-Ups:

References:
Tech Writer Lawsuit: From: Darcy Rumbold
Re: Tech Writer Lawsuit: From: John Posada

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