A few weeks ago, Evnisha Malani shared a LinkedIn post where they asked—”Why writers are one of the first ones to be laid off every time the ship is sinking.”
I do not have any numbers to support their opinion but I have noticed it as a sort of general trend in the last few years. Envisha adds in the same post—”I genuinely want to understand why writers are so dispensable for every company out there?”
When a company starts, their first hires are engineers, and the folks in sales and marketing. Gradually they build more functions in design, research and analysis, support, content, brand, and others.
It also means that sometimes the other functions particularly content, are generally validating or justifying their role in the organization’s growth—almost competing with the other functions for the budget or other non-monetary investments such as in the processes. Once the product starts growing, their sales and engineering are the forever-work-in-progress functions because these were the primary functions from day one whereas content is also doing its job.
Part of the problem is the content itself because we continue speaking in the language of our role in product and organization.
Content makes product just as the code makes a product. Content makes a sale. Content makes the design what it is. Content makes a brand. Content is foundational to marketing. So, to set up the content is also part of product sentiment comes back to hurt us. One of the ways to do it in smaller companies is not to speak in the language of content.
Assuming that Evnisha meant it more for the Indian market where product content is still in its infancy, the way how many content strategists, content designers, or UX writers work in big or mid-size growing technology companies in India clearly shows the gap.
Here is a small Twitter thread where I shared my observations about content’s role in digital products.
As long as the industry will see the discussions in podcasts and conferences around the content is also part of product statements, content could often be saving itself.
