Rough Riding: What Else You Can Expect
While there are enormous advantages to basing your technical communication operation overseas, you must also take into account some major difficulties.
Dealing with Small Thinking
- Lots of companies will think small and pay accordingly.
- Lots make only components, R&D may be limited.
- Many companies are not very interested in user friendliness.
- The old paradigm — programmers writing user guides — has many more lives.
There are few countries where the job market for technical communicators is as spectacular as might appear, even if the economy is booming.
In SE Asia, for example, most companies, for the present:
- Make only components in SE Asia; the manuals are then written in the multinational corporations home country;
- Are not spending much on R&D there compared to what they spend in the most industrialized countries and they are allowing these expenses to increase only slowly;
- Want the documentation done fast and cheap and are not yet especially concerned about user friendliness — many are not altogether clear about either the quantity or quality of work needed in user documentation and user-friendly design to achieve anything like a competitive parity in global markets; and
- Are still using the old user documentation paradigm in which engineers already on the payroll write the manuals instead of bringing in “expensive” — and technically limited — writer-specialists.
Distrust May be High, Particularly of Outsiders
Trust is decidedly not automatic in the region and in many countries the government and the culture may be far from tolerating the freewheeling, “hang loose” approach common in the U.S. And they may be especially uneasy with people who can communicate — not to mention people active in organizations of communicators! While this “nervousness” affects local people more than foreigners it can have, at worst, a chilling effect on ideas, creativity and innovation. You may need to learn to watch what you say more than is your present habit.
- To counter this distrust, you must invest the time and effort to build relationships.
- And you must learn new methods when straightforwardness and/or the (hallowed) Old Ways don't work.
- You must deal with foreign bureaucracies.
In many countries there will be substantial obstacles to foreigners working in the local economy. For example, as in the US, the company may have to certify that they can't find a local person to do the job. This is supposed to be a reassurance to the local citizens and a safeguard to the government that opposition demagogues cannot cry "Foreigners are taking our jobs!" In many countries, in practice, these certifications are perfunctory; you will have to learn from the commercial attache of your embassy, the chamber of commerce and other contacts what the real local practice is.
In some countries — especially in the NIEs and developing countries — if you wish to set up your own business you will face barriers more daunting than those for merely taking a job with an existing company. If you want to set up a corporation - the local country will have another name for it — you are likely to need a lawyer and you may even need an "outside" accountant to prepare official monthly reports. In addition, you may be required to have a capitalization that is beyond your capabilities; $250,000 is a common figure in Southeast Asia. Finally, some countries require that your corporation have a local partner who owns 50%, 51%, 90%, etc. Beware of unscrupulous individuals who will claim to serve as your local partner for a fee, who will claim to solve all your problems with the bureaucracy, etc. In fact, beware of everything.
Again, your must depend on your own research to reveal:
- Which of these requirements are more honored in the breach than the observance
- Which are utterly negotiable according to whom you know and how you're willing to negotiate
- Which are set in stone
The requirements for setting up a sole proprietorship or partnership are ordinarily far lighter than for setting up a corporation. Try to keep in mind that what you have to offer is truly something of value in the country and that there are forces which will strive to overcome the ossifying bureaucracy you may find yourself up against. Identifying and harnessing such forces and resources requires effort on your part.
Major accounting firms, like Ernst & Young and Peat, Marwick, put out booklets to help you grasp the business climate, tax, and accounting practices in various countries, such as: Doing Business in Indonesia. The government itself will offer such materials too, though these — since they cannot tell the truth about which rules are enforced and which are not or how things really get done — are of dubious value.
In general, you must learn to be even more patient and resourceful than you've had to be in your previous life in order to deal with bureaucracy and red tape. In many places you may not be able to go about navigating hassles in the way that seems most straightforward to you. And you must invest the time and energy to build relationships that will make it possible to get past suspicion and resolve such matters and get back to what's fun in this foreign, fascinating place.
In any case, be sure not to exhaust yourself wrangling or worrying over these bureaucratic requirements. The problems are usually much more solvable than they appear, though they often take more time than you would have dreamed possible. Often you can get a temporary clearance so you can get down to work while the authorities review the paperwork ad infinitum. Be flexible and expect to be successful; do not expect speed.
- In some NIEs (e.g., Singapore, Hong Kong), you may find yourself working very long hours — all the time.
- Don't forget to take into account that you may be working long, even very long hours and many or most weekends. On the other hand, in some European countries the outlook is historically more "humanist;" you may be able to take advantage of the longer vacation time that locals have fought for and in many cases can still insist on.
- You must put in the time and live with the anxiety needed in order to learn to see and function in new cultures, new ways of thinking and new ways of doing business
Issues for Women:
Financial, psychological, security
In numerous regions the opportunities for women are less terrific and more problematic. There are financial, dignity, and security issues to be worked out. In most of the countries of Southeast Asia, for example, it is harder for a foreigner who is a woman to get a technical communication job. And women will be paid significantly less than men — in some countries substantially less; the pay of men, on the other hand, is often increased if they are married and have children. Benefits like health care, for example, are often pegged to the man, serving to prop up the notion that it is he who is the head of household.
To be sure, there are countless men and institutions in the United States that reinforce the idea that women need to be subordinate. But in SE Asia local men will more often expect a woman to limit herself to playing roles — whether at work or at home — that glorify and support the men. The governments of the region universally recognize the men as their primary citizens and women exercise far less political power than they do in the United States. In much of the region local women traditionally do not drink alcohol or smoke; in many areas they do not drive buses, taxis, motorcycles or motor scooters, and in some parts there are only a few places for them to go outside the home in the evening. At least some of these conditions may be changing slowly.
If you are female and wish to base yourself overseas you have considerable extra research to do. For whatever the target countries you are considering you must explore and evaluate the financial, psychological and, not least of all, safety issues. In some regions you can discover organizations of women. In SE Asia these tend to be informal and politically weak but they can provide important information and/or personal support.
The problems that both men and women must face cannot be dismissed and ought not to be minimized, and for women they’re significantly more difficult to solve. It would be understandable if an individual felt overwhelmed or discouraged. But after initial bewilderment, problems like these are — believe it or not — either absolutely solvable or absolutely navigable — and are good training for the future!