STC CWC Member Forum

Recent Salary Survery for BC?

2011-10-25T08:43:24-08:00

Does anyone know of or if there has been a recent salary survey for BC or localized to Vancouver or Victoria? The last STC survey I have that includes Canada is from 2005 or 2006. I know STC has a recent one, but it is US based and costs money. I read somewhere that STC Alberta also did one, but again it is localized to their area.

What do you think of doing a survey for the STC Canada West Coast chapter?

Thank you,

Randi

Canadian salary survey

2010-01-05T18:20:42-08:00

As a contractor, I always find it strange to set my rates. Am I charging too much? Too little?

STC has, for many years, produced a salary survey. The results are available here: http://www.stc.org/stcmembers/salary-database.asp?SSOToken=XXLA6uFnXAYCabUtnFAB3ghB3cY=. You need to log into your STC.org account in order to access it - one of the many perks of being an STC member!

Alas, the “survey” is U.S.-only. This is because the data are pulled from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment Statistics (OES), which classifies technical writers as a separate profession from other types of writers. A similar distinction is not made in Canada, so it makes an equivalent survey difficult to do. Regardless, the salary surveys are still worth looking at.

The Canadian chapters are working on a Canadian salary survey. We’re fine-tuning the questions and hope to unleash it in a few months. Yes, the survey will be self-reported, but I sincerely hope that it will give us a glimpse into salaries across the country.

Discuss: Top 10 things not to do at an information interview!

2010-05-12T00:01:07-08:00

Okay, experienced and non-experienced professionals. How many of you have ever experienced what Karen Rempel detailed here:
http://www.stcwestcoast.ca/index.php/site/coastlines_article/top_10_things_not_to_do_at_an_information_interview/

Feel free to let the comments fly!

Commuting from Gibsons to Vancouver

2012-01-25T20:05:26-08:00

Was curious if there were any Gibsons commuters on the board, and if they’d be willing to relate their experience commuting. Thanks! Chris Bolster

Chapter offering new information interview service

2011-08-12T10:37:07-08:00

This year our chapter is bringing an exciting new information interview service to the technical writing community in Vancouver.

The information interview service connects volunteer senior technical writers with people who are requesting information interviews, whether they are tech writing students who are required to do interviews for their programs, or people considering entering the field of tech writing. The service offers a 30- to 60-minute interview (length is at the discretion of the senior writer). It could be in person or on the phone, depending on what the two people decide. This service will raise awareness of our chapter, bring new people to program meetings, and hopefully generate new memberships for the chapter.

As information interview coordinator, I will match up the requesters with senior writers, by going sequentially through a roster of volunteers. This service will be advertised on our STC CWC website starting in September, and I also invite you to advertise it or link to it on your own websites, as I’m sure many of you get requests for info interviews each year.

We are going to ask for a donation of $10 for the service. The donation will be optional, so that money is not a barrier to those seeking an interview. In return for the donation, the requester will receive the interview and possibly admission to the next program meeting after the interview.

Requiring less of a time commitment than mentorship, this is an opportunity for you to share your valuable experience and insights with people who are new to the field of technical writing. It’s also a chance to help raise money for our chapter. I hope you will see the value in this service and be willing to offer your help. At this point I am estimating that each volunteer senior writer might be requested to do one or two information interviews per year.

I’d like to thank the chapter executive and program team for their support in working out the details of this exciting new service. We’re almost there now! And though all the nitty gritty details haven’t been totally ironed out yet, we’ve already got 10 volunteer senior writers and have two interviews completed or in progress. Clearly this service is answering a real need in the community.

Please let me know if I can add your name to the roster of senior technical writers for this service. Either reply here in the forum, or send me an email: info-interview at stcwestcoast dot ca. I am excited about this opportunity to strengthen our chapter’s bonds with the Vancouver community at large, and I welcome you all to be a part of it.

Warmly,

Yoga Outreach - Reach Out Challenge

2011-09-29T09:02:59-08:00

Has working full-time got you feeling like a zombie? Are you turning into your computer?

Come back to life with the Reach Out Challenge for Yoga Outreach! Starting October 10, do 30 minutes of yoga a day for 30 days to come alive and to support Yoga Outreach programs.

You can do yoga at home on your own, grab a yoga video from your library, or go to a class at your local community centre or yoga studio. Do it for you! To help others too, get pledges from your friends for each day that you meet the challenge.

For details, see:
http://yogaoutreach.com/reachout-challenge/

Take the 30-day Yoga Outreach challenge and help Yoga Outreach raise funds and friends. Their mission is to identify, develop, and deliver healing and life-affirming yoga programs to people who can not directly access these resources. Yoga Outreach is a Vancouver-based registered charity. Yoga Outreach partners with volunteer teachers and facilities and organizations to provide free yoga.

http://yogaoutreach.com/

PEBKAC - Lighter moments in technical writing

2011-09-19T12:35:59-08:00

Pronounced peb-kack, this charming acronym stands for Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about this occupational hazard for tech writers, tech support staff, and users of technical documentation:

User Error and related phrases such as PEBKAC (“Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair”), PICNIC (“Problem In Chair Not In Computer”), PIBCAK (“Problem Is Between Chair And Keyboard”) or ID-10T error (“Idiot error”) are also used as slang in technical circles with a derogatory meaning.[1][2] This usage implies a lack of computer savvy, asserting that problems arisen when using a device are the fault of the user. Critics of the term argue that the problems are caused instead by a device designed in such a way that it induces errors.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_error

It’s one of the joys of our job to poke fun at our end users, but who among us hasn’t had a PEBKAC moment of our own? I invite you to share a story from either end of the PEBKAC spectrum. To start things off, here’s one of my less stellar moments:

I had just purchased a great new wireless keyboard and mouse, plugged the thingie into the USB port, and was ready to go. Everything seemed to be working fine as I typed some exploratory text. So I dialed in to my client’s site using my regular remote access log-in. So far, so good. Then I started running the client’s software on my remote desktop. The software requires a username and password in ALLCAPS, and both the username and password are masked with asterisks. I tried logging in, and it didn’t work. I tried again, and got the same error message. Since software under development is often buggy, and sometimes the system goes down, I sent out an email to the whole team to find out if anyone else was having trouble logging in. I got back a bunch of messages, and guess what? PEBKAC! It turned out that during the remote log-in, my keyboard was set from ALLCAPS back to non-ALLCAPS, but the Caps Lock indicator was backwards. So I was logging in using lowercase letters. Was my face red! Especially when I had to send an email to the whole group explaining my error. At least a few people got to laugh at my expense that day.

This story kicks off the 2011 program year for STC CWC. Join in the forum fun and share a PEBKAC story of your own! :-)

Some good networking groups in Vancouver

2011-08-12T15:43:21-08:00

I recommend LikeMind Vancouver:
@LikemindVan on Twitter
http://www.facebook.com/groups/likemindvancouver/
Next meeting August 19 (third Friday of every month, location tends to change).

The people from @LikeMindVan have now started Creative Mornings Vancouver as well:
http://www.facebook.com/CreativeMorningsVancouver - inaugural meeting, Sept. 2

I also recommend looking at the various technically-focused and startup-focused meetup groups on meetup.com . So many great opportunities there.

The point of networking is not to immediately snag a job, although it’s great if that happens, but to make yourself visible and memorable to others.

Tech writing market booming in Vancouver

2011-08-12T13:23:29-08:00

Our Job Bank Coordinator reported today that 21 new jobs have been posted on the Job Bank since June 6. More than the entire previous year. Wow! The market must be picking up.

Do you have any stories to share about whether things are boom or bust right now? Tales of lay-offs, or massive new projects starting? Please tell us about it!

A rising tide floats all boats!
- Wikipedia attributes this Confucian-like saying to John F. Kennedy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_rising_tide_lifts_all_boats

Recruitment agencies—friend or foe?

2010-04-05T19:51:09-08:00

In recent years it has become quite a common practice to hire technical writers through a recruitment agency. Although Dynapro Systems, Rockwell Software, and Rockwell Automation had been my clients since 1996, on the most recent contract I did for them they hired my technical writing services through an agency. This was after a 12-year long, extremely positive working relationship! I was an incorporated technical writing consultant with multiple clients. I had turned down several offers for permanent employment with the company as a technical writer over the years. What earthly reason could they have for wanting to pay a higher rate to go through an agency?

Obviously, this was a new corporate policy, which affected my technical writing contracts with my long-time client from 2008 onwards. So to unravel this mystery, let’s take a look at what was happening in the news back then in the high tech world. Well, actually, we’ll have to go back about 10 years, to 1998:

Microsoft Loses Major Lawsuit Brought by Technical Writers

This story was brought to my attention when I raised this issue at one of our contractor meetings a while back. Some technical writers who were contractors successfully sued Microsoft to be deemed employees. Their goal was to gain access to Microsoft’s extremely generous employee benefit package. Although they won the lawsuit, their actions have had a major negative impact on the rest of us technical writers. There is now something called The Microsoft Rule which requires technical writers to work on contracts for a maximum of one year and then take a six month break, to avoid the possibility of being deemed an employee. Rockwell instituted this policy as well.

In the old days, the main thing Canadian companies worried about was the Canada Revenue Agency test for distinguishing an employee from a contractor. Companies didn’t want to get stuck paying EI and CPP for temporary workers. And contractors like me, who enjoy this way of life, were just as eager to ensure we met the conditions for being considered independent. Incorporation for the contractor was an additional step that established one as an independent technical writer.

Coming back to the present, in my experience through monitoring the jobs on monster.ca and workopolis.com, the majority of new technical writing contracts are advertised by recruiting agencies. I receive several calls a week from recruiters from throughout North America, looking for technical writers to fill positions here in BC and Alberta! What madness! It is becoming more and more difficult to be hired directly. I believe the main reason is that companies are afraid of having the same problem that Microsoft had, so they seek the protection of having a layer of bureaucracy between themselves and their hired hands.

As always, it is the worker who pays the price. For the company isn’t willing to pay a higher fee for long. (Rockwell asked me to drop my rate by $25/hour if I wanted to continue to do work for them—after taking a six month break, of course. I refused.) Recruiting agencies charge an hourly fee on every hour worked by the writer. This fee does not come out of the company’s pocket. It comes from the writer. So the rates being offered to writers are dropping as a consequence. By about the same amount as the agencies charge. Coincidence? I think not!

It’s a sad state of affairs, my friends! If any parallel between the recruitment agency and the procurer in the world’s oldest profession comes to mind, I wouldn’t blame you. I have had the same thought myself!

What value do these agencies add? Most of them don’t understand what a technical writer does and are not in a position to evaluate our resumes, skills, or experience. They offer the same type of service that the company’s in-house human resources department already performs—finding candidates, performing an initial interview (often a superficial 5-minute phone call, in my recent experience), and checking on references if the candidate is offered a position. For this, the recruitment agency takes their chunk, hour after hour, for the life of the contract. And they have a clause that prevents the technical writer from working directly for the company for a minimum period of time after the contract ends. The agency I am currently working through wanted this period to be a year, but I managed to negotiate the term down to nine months.

I would love to hear your responses to this posting. Do you agree that recruitment agencies are taking unfair advantage of technical writers in the new Microsoft Rule world? Do you see value in going through an agency? Have you had positive experiences you could share with your peers? Do you see any way to improve this situation?