Absolutely true. A lot of this discussion has nothing at all to do with the quality of documentation. It’s all about perception. Do managers “perceive” that DITA makes it possible to hire cheaper writers? Do writers perceive that DITA will narrow their field or put them in a writing straitjacket?

That doesn’t mean the discussion isn’t relevant, but it does take it away from the core of what technical communicators are supposedly paid to do.

As for “connective tissue”, even without the publishing specialization, you just need to write the connective prose for those outputs that require them. DITA doesn’t prevent you from having untyped topics used for this sort of thing, the philosophy just discourages it. That said, there’s nothing that prevents you from creating those topics for use only in a book format of the information and using a different DITA map for the online. You can repurpose the base set of topics to whatever output format you want and tailor it to a degree.

At the end of the day, the customer will or won’t demand great documentation– the success of the dev effort will hinge on its ability to address the customer’s demands. If the field is being devalued, it’s being devalued by the customer, not the type of authoring environment. If it’s being devalued by the customer, then that might be a sign that the user experience designed by the developers is rendering “great” documentation obsolete. I’ve always maintained that the best-designed software requires the least documentation, and I think that’s becoming more widely recognized. Better software keeps the user’s nose out of the documentation, and with fewer noses in the documentation, companies can save money on writers and/or tech support staff.

Something to consider: We might be seeing fewer jobs for mediocre writers because companies can churn out more and better documentation with a small staff of great writers and a structured authoring environment. In this paradigm, salaries remain constant or even improve some for the top 25% of professional writers. I think we’re just seeing the development of a much more competitive job market for technical communicators, even after high tech fully recovers.

I mean devaluation in a literal sense. That is, companies deciding to pay less for the services of people in that occupational field. I won’t claim that society suffers, but I will claim that technical communicators could be faced with a job market where their services are perceived as having less value than before.

Thanks for the comment.