A Career in Technical Writing: The fax about outsourcing

The Bullet Points

• Outsourcing means contracting with another company to provide a service that would otherwise be performed by an employee. This is often done for projects because they require a temporary increase in resources.
• Offshoring means relocating a job (either by outsourcing or through your own company) to a foreign country because of costs of other considerations.
• When you get a new job, there is always paperwork involved whether you are a regular employee or a contractor.
• The fax machine remains the dominant source of communication for signed forms.
• Typical paperwork includes contracts, confidentiality/non-disclosure agreements, direct deposit forms, right-to-work and tax information.

Outsourced, not Offshored

The term outsourcing gets misinterpreted pretty often these days. Most people, when they think about outsourcing, think of some guy in a foreign country who answers the phone when you call customer support. While that person may or may not be outsourced labor, the better term for sending a job to another country is offshoring. Outsourcing simply means that a company contracts with another company to provide a service that would otherwise be performed by an employee.

Outsourcing is a very common practice that often takes place locally. Companies outsource using temporary employment agencies, consulting agencies or simply companies that specialize in a service. They might outsource such things as their advertising and marketing, public relations, custodial services or their technical support. Individuals also outsource. They outsource when they hire people to do such things as their taxes, their laundry, their housekeeping or their landscaping.

In my case, when I first went to work as a contract technical writer, I was providing an outsourced service. I was working for a company in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina. That was the company that signed my checks and provided my benefits. They were also the company I would go to if I had an employment related problem or grievance.

I was working at a company in Tucson, Arizona. That was the company that required my services and the company that gave me most of my marching orders. They told me what they needed and they had the right to review my job performance and even end my contract if they were dissatisfied. I was essentially working for two companies. This created a lot of paperwork and resulted in a lot of faxing.

A Flood of Faxes

It started before I even showed up for my first day of work. The first thing that WTW, the company that paid me, faxed me was my contract. I was a contractor after all. The contract gave the details of my pay (both the amount and frequency), my rights (a short list), and their rights (a long list). I think they also slipped in a couple of chapters from On the Road translated into pig-Latin. With the low readability of a fax it is hard to tell sometimes.

The paperwork amounted to over twenty pages of small type and they had to fax every one of those pages to me. I then had to sign on the long blank lines, initial the short blank lines and fax it back to them. Pages got lost in the transition so they would then fax the paperwork back to me again. I objected to the wording of one portion, so they had to rewrite it and refax it again. In addition to the contract, I had to sign and fax non-disclosure / confidentiality agreements, tax forms, right-to-work forms, direct deposit forms and copies of my identification. All of this took the better part of a day.

Fax machines are pretty ancient technology at this point. These days, email and PDF forms have made the paperwork process a bit easier. In the end though, signed forms still have to be faxed or at least scanned into a computer and emailed. It is a tedious but necessary process.

The Weekly Fax Regimen

I wish I could say that that was the end of my faxing, but it was just the beginning. The process continued once I got to work. As a contract employee I had to have my hours reviewed and signed by a manager (or at least a real employee) and then I had to fax that form to WTW every week. If I didn’t fax in the form, I didn’t get paid.

All of that paperwork and faxing delayed the start of my contract for three days. This distressed the company that requested me because they were in an incredible hurry to get me working. There was a lot of documentation to be done and they were way behind. It was vital that I get started right away. I needed to hit the ground running. At least, that’s what they said…

Further Reading

• Outsourcing vs. Offshoring: What’s the difference? by EC EDI: The terms are not identical.
• Document Hack (A Technical Writer’s Journal): Interview & Negotiation by John Hewitt: A discussion of another interview and hiring session.
• Internet Fax Service List by Kevin Savetz: If you don’t want to use a clunky fax machine, these online services will also send and receive faxes for you.

Discussion Questions

• Do you trust yourself to review a twenty page employment contract on your own?
• Can you think of any services that your have outsourced?
• Have you ever lost a job to outsourcing or offshoring?
• When is the last time you had to fax a document?

Next Time

I begin my life as a newbie technical writer and find that the world isn’t quite what I expected.