realistic expectations in Pune, India

Fri Apr 24 12:53:28 PDT 2015

John,

I have worked in Pune for 4 years. You can definitely find the person you
are looking for in Pune.

Tech Writing in India is a little new for the Devs\QEs. The good thing is,
you already know the challenges the Pune hire might face.

There are plenty of writers in Pune with 10+ years of experience and a lot
of them will be interested, because not may job openings require 10+ years
of experience. Most of the hiring, especially in Pune area, happens for 2-7
years of experience: someone who is not completely new but also will not
ask for a lot. Tech-Writers in India are more willing to shift cities
compared to writers in rest of the world. So your candidate can come from
Bangalore or Hyderabad also.

Not all of the candidates with 10+ years of experience, however, will meet
all your requirements.

- FM experience shouldn't be a problem - writers with a lot of companies in
India work with conditional text, variables, and text insets.
- API docs - depends on what kind of inputs you are going to give the
writer.
- Good grammar is not rare.

You may struggle to find a writer who autonomously does API documentation
and has excellent grammar. I haven't seen the two skills come as a package
often enough.

You may have to screen up to 15 or 20 people, but you definitely can find a
good writer.

Hope this helps..

-Gyanesh

On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 11:37 PM, Meenakshi Sharma <mintzsharma at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Experience won't be an issue; quality may be. We'd hired technical writers
> in Pune as far back as 2001. We don't have writers there anymore. We found
> people who had a good attitude and were interested in our software, but
> their writing wasn't "clean." Grammar was a real issue. I was surprised,
> because I had grown up in India and had moved to the US only in my late
> 20s. However, things may have improved. We haven't done any interviews in
> the last five years.
>
> Meenakshi
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 5:04 AM, John Sgammato <john.sgammato at actifio.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi gang,
>> I have to hire a writer in Pune, India, but I wonder if I have
>> unrealistic expectations.
>> We have a pretty sophisticated doc system in unstructured FrameMaker 12,
>> using variables, conditional text, text insets, etc.
>> We need API content as well as content for network administrators and
>> managed-service providers, SaaS, and business resiliency. Knowledge of data
>> storage would be good.
>> The person will work independently, far from the home team in Boston. The
>> development team in Pune is a good team, but they do all the things that
>> aggravate writers, making last-minute changes and expecting "a quick
>> search-and-replace", not reviewing docs, etc.
>> The person has to be able to essentially finish and publish the doc to US
>> standards. My team does not have the time to edit the work from India. The
>> writer must know the proper use of articles and placement of commas.
>>
>> So I am looking for a veteran with good grammar and 10+ years of
>> experience using all the parts of unstructured FM and with real-life
>> experience pushing back on a team. I can say all sorts of empowering things
>> from Boston, but if the writer doesn't feel it in his/her heart, doesn't
>> have the courage and the chutzpah to stand up to the team to ensure doc
>> quality, then I have the wrong person and I get stuck with poor-quality
>> documentation.
>>
>> Am I looking for a chimera? There are plenty of writers like that in the
>> Boston area, but I need one in Pune. I suspect that TechComm has been a
>> career in Boston a lot longer than it has in Pune...does anyone there even
>> have ten years of experience?
>> --
>>
>> <http://www.actifio.com/>    *John Sgammato, Documentation Architect*
>> *e* john.sgammato at actifio.com  *c* 508.927.2083
>> *t* @actifiodocs <http://twitter.com/actifiodocs>
>>
>> 333 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451
>> <http://twitter.com/actifio>    <http://www.linkedin.com/company/399246>
>>   <https://plus.google.com/102870897962348937868/posts>
>> <http://www.youtube.com/user/actifio>    <http://www.actifio.com/>
>>
>> *Radically simple copy data management *
>>
>> *.*
>>
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>
> --
> Meenakshi Sharma
> Director of Marketing
> eGain Communications
> Mountain View, CA
>
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-- 
Gyanesh Talwar
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