To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
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Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#2Eng manager at a team that was remote pre-pandemic and I will 100% confirm this is critical to getting things done.
I'll add on that it is tough to find someone who is a great writer and a great engineer early on in their careers. You just haven't had a lot of time to practice both. When you're looking for junior candidates, they will often fall into two camps: they'll write too much, or they'll write too little.
If you're the candidate: err on the side of writing too much.
If you're the manager: writing too much is considerably easier to fix than writing too little.
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#3Eng manager at a team that was remote pre-pandemic and I will 100% confirm this is critical to getting things done. I'll add on that it is tough to find someone who is a great writer and a great engineer early on in their careers. You just haven't had a lot of time to practice both. When you're looking for junior candidates, they will often fall into two camps: they'll write too much, or they'll write too little. If…
For a junior candidate, which do you think is easier to train? The engineering skills, or the writing skills? At first glance, I think writing... But as I think more I personally think the writing / communication skills are more challenging to teach, especially to engineers because it is more of an "art" than a fixed talent.
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#4Eng manager at a team that was remote pre-pandemic and I will 100% confirm this is critical to getting things done. I'll add on that it is tough to find someone who is a great writer and a great engineer early on in their careers. You just haven't had a lot of time to practice both. When you're looking for junior candidates, they will often fall into two camps: they'll write too much, or they'll write too little. If…
For a junior candidate, which do you think is easier to train? The engineering skills, or the writing skills? At first glance, I think writing... But as I think more I personally think the writing / communication skills are more challenging to teach, especially to engineers because it is more of an "art" than a fixed talent.
I find they can sort of be taught in similar ways, as there are a lot of things about good, clear coding that translate to/from clear writing. At the risk of self-promoting, I wrote a comparison here a long time ago: https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2016/01/writing-code.html
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#5Eng manager at a team that was remote pre-pandemic and I will 100% confirm this is critical to getting things done. I'll add on that it is tough to find someone who is a great writer and a great engineer early on in their careers. You just haven't had a lot of time to practice both. When you're looking for junior candidates, they will often fall into two camps: they'll write too much, or they'll write too little. If…
For a junior candidate, which do you think is easier to train? The engineering skills, or the writing skills? At first glance, I think writing... But as I think more I personally think the writing / communication skills are more challenging to teach, especially to engineers because it is more of an "art" than a fixed talent.
Also been a hiring manager but not OP. I would honestly say they are more related than you think. If you can't fit a narrative to your architecture or what you're doing, it will be hard to understand. It's important to know the "story" of what you are building: where is the data going? Who is the user?
If you come up with an architecture that is complicated, just keep working on it and editing, like writing, to make it make more sense. You need good editors / code reviewers on both sides, and they will make you a better reader and writer.
If you struggle with writing skills (not all people are good at some particular language) I find being able to make a good picture is even more essential.
I think one of the things to state is that it's not about writing something that sounds important. It's about writing something that people can understand. Don't get too stuck in the "art" part of it. At least for me, simplicity is beauty.
Another way to try this is to sit down with someone and say "explain what this does" and then see what they come up with. Some people are really good at talking, but not writing. But being able to explain is almost as good, and sometimes more necessary than writing.
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#6Eng manager at a team that was remote pre-pandemic and I will 100% confirm this is critical to getting things done. I'll add on that it is tough to find someone who is a great writer and a great engineer early on in their careers. You just haven't had a lot of time to practice both. When you're looking for junior candidates, they will often fall into two camps: they'll write too much, or they'll write too little. If…
For a junior candidate, which do you think is easier to train? The engineering skills, or the writing skills? At first glance, I think writing... But as I think more I personally think the writing / communication skills are more challenging to teach, especially to engineers because it is more of an "art" than a fixed talent.
GP's post is written with an implicit assumption that the junior candidate's engineering skills are "good enough", so that should absolutely be the focus. But I agree that writing is probably easier to train.
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#7It's not really about 'writing skills', it's 'communication skills'.
'Writing' usually implies the ability to be creatively articulate, for example, like writing a long form news article. People can be great writers and poor communicators.
For coherent team communications you even don't need proper grammar - what you need the ability to be clear, succinct, appropriate, provide context, timely etc..
It's not about 'writing' so much as it is 'social' and 'structured' communicating.
People with strong sensibility for others in a social context will know what needs to be said and not.
For example, some people, when reading something ambiguous in an e-mail, will take it the wrong way. Some will not. Some will know when not to write something and when to.
Again, this is not a 'writing skill' per sey more like communication.
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#8This isn't my experience, I find that people who are quick to initiate communication do really well. Doesn't matter too much about the writing (maybe some people are much worse than us at writing) as we simply voice chat if things weren't clear
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#9Yeah. And I'm having a ton of problems with co-workers who have shitty writing skills; where, pre-covid, they weren't that bad. I could always walk over and get a clarification when I needed. But jeez, come on guys, the same people who get their panties in a bunch over an extra space in my yaml, or "too many comments" - don't bother to slack complete sentences.
Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills
#10It's not really about 'writing skills', it's 'communication skills'. 'Writing' usually implies the ability to be creatively articulate, for example, like writing a long form news article. People can be great writers and poor communicators. For coherent team communications you even don't need proper grammar - what you need the ability to be clear, succinct, appropriate, provide context, timely etc.. It's not about 'wr…
"you need the ability to be clear, succinct, appropriate, timely etc.."
These are the basics of technical writing.
But to be fair, technical writers are also called technical communicators.