Listen, the Numbers are Singing

By Paresh Naik

Paresh Naik is an experienced Technical Communication professional who has worked for several companies in Pune, Bangalore, and London. Paresh currently works as a Technical Writer with Symphony Services, Pune, where he handles the responsibility of all the product documentation for one of Symphony's clients.

"Why do you use red papers for the grocery list when the white ones are so easily available?" a friend yelled at me as we set out for a shopping trip.

I quietly told him to remove his red glasses that he had forgotten to take out.

That's precisely what I'll ask you to do before you start looking at the STC India 2005 Salary Survey Report. Numbers can mean anything; numbers can be made to mean anything. If you want to listen to what the numbers are really saying, keep aside your preconceptions for a moment. Your prejudices about statistics, biases about what makes a well-paid Technical Communicator, predispositions about a particular academic background, location, domain, and so on; let them not clutter your vision.

So, what are numbers saying?

First and foremost, they say, "We are a very small group." Although 450 was the highest response ever achieved for STC's salary survey in India, it is still way below the minimum to establish enough credibility for the report. Now that the survey is over, there's very little, in fact nothing, we can do about it. Let's learn a lesson and put more efforts on this aspect the next time round. We have to do something about this, be it giving some incentives, directly approaching the employers, or having more personalized invitations.

Secondly, the numbers say, "Though small, we are a very diverse group." More than your negotiation skills, more than your qualifications and experience, salaries essentially are a function of the value you bring to your organization. In India, at present, a spectrum of professionals, right from the high-end information designers to the low-end mere formatting fellows, call themselves Technical Communicators; each one having a very unique value proposition. Hence, it's not surprising to find the same wide spectrum reflected in the salaries of people with the same experience range. Thus, I would say that the numbers are quite sincere in having this diversity and, in fact, if they weren't this varied, I would have doubted their honesty.

Thirdly, they say a lot of things about various factors affecting the salaries, but they also say, "We are saying this for the first time." It's great to see how different factors like education, team size, organization type, and so on impact the salary levels, but let the numbers say the same things about these factors a few more times. We should wait for consistent results in a couple of more surveys before we accept the effect of these factors as norms.

Lastly, among the constant chattering noise that these numbers are making, they also sing some common tunes. Look at the mega trends underlying the tables filled with the numbers, the trends that are visible even if you remove the last three or four digits of each number. To confused newbie or a wanna-be Technical Communicators, the numbers assure an equally fulfilling career like any other. To Technical Communicators in the youth of their careers, they are warned not to expect the same raises, as in the initial years, forever. To ambitious Technical Communicators who expect a boost in the salary with some sort of certification or course in Technical Communication, the numbers advise to wait until we have a good-enough course for which the industry is ready to pay more. The numbers murmur a few thumb rules in the ears of the HR professionals. They reveal that it's still a lot cheaper to do the Technical Communications work in India. They warn you against relating high pay packages with giant-sized organizations, and they connect you with the rest of the crowd around you by telling you that you aren't the only one who wants more challenges and higher responsibilities in the job, you aren't the only one who is taking away the job of someone from an advanced country, you aren't the only one who picked up the tricks of the trade on the job without any formal training. There's a little smile on their faces when they tell you that it's not only you; most of the folks around here find it difficult to leave the warm safety of permanent job to break into the tempting fields of freelancing. They cheer you and tell you to be proud of being a part of a growing multi-crore industry and to be in the right part of the world at a perfectly right time. They reassure you that things are moving from chaos to consolidation.

The numbers are singing many such tunes. All you have to do is give your heart and listen to them quietly, carefully, and impartially.

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