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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

#61

Post by alquemist »

irrational wrote: post #59
hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

But, when it's that long, do people read it? It seems like a great CYB tactic, but maybe a poor communication tactic. I'm a voracious reader, but when it comes to most corporate communication I won't really read anything over a paragraph long. I might skim it if it is from my manager. Maybe.

Title. Abstract. Details.

Most people will skim the title. Some will read the abstract. Few will read a specific paragraph or two of details. Yet, the writer doesn't know who's going to read what. Could be the writer himself, 6 months down the line. Often times those details are pure gold.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#63

Post by BeetleB »

hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

As a manager, you can probably get away with this.

As an IC, people rarely read my emails if it doesn't fit in their screen (so 3 paragraphs is the max).

The only thing I've found that works is to send details, and then probe the recipient on each important item in there to make sure they understood what I wrote. If I'm too detailed, they will get lost. If I'm very concise (but still complete), they'll misinterpret.

Getting people to reflect back to you what they understood is encouraged in most communications books. You can write the perfect email, and it will still get misunderstood.

Edit:

It is amusing that people are responding giving me writing advice. Equally amusing is the implicit tone in some of the comments that I'm doing it wrong and implying I don't follow what they are suggesting - especially when I didn't even discuss how I write my emails!

As I said: You can write the perfect email, and there will always be someone who will misinterpret it. The problem is not merely in the content, but in the other (including their worldview, culture, social status, etc). The solution isn't to try to become a more perfect writer, but to understand the dynamics involved in communication (written or verbal).

To paraphrase one of the books: People will interpret what you say based on their worldview - something that you often do not have access to. It's their worldview that will often make them misinterpret something that is very clear and unambiguous in what you say. Accept that reality and work around it.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#64

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

irrational wrote: post #59
hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

But, when it's that long, do people read it? It seems like a great CYB tactic, but maybe a poor communication tactic. I'm a voracious reader, but when it comes to most corporate communication I won't really read anything over a paragraph long. I might skim it if it is from my manager. Maybe.

If everyone in a corporation is unwilling to read more than a paragraph of a colleague's thoughts, it's amazing anything of any remote complexity is able to be produced by collaborative software organizations. Unless it's one guy in a corner, talking to nobody.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#65

Post by dang »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #42

Note, this is also true for great non-remote employees. Highly developed writing skills are a superpower everywhere.

Yes, and it's arguably why we're all here. HN and YC developed out of pg's writing.

There are other examples too. StackOverflow comes to mind.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#66

Post by Swizec »

irrational wrote: post #59
hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

But, when it's that long, do people read it? It seems like a great CYB tactic, but maybe a poor communication tactic. I'm a voracious reader, but when it comes to most corporate communication I won't really read anything over a paragraph long. I might skim it if it is from my manager. Maybe.

People read if it’s written well. Don’t make it long to be long, make it long because it needs to be long.

My favorite feedback is when someone replies to a 1000+ word newsletter with “Wow, short and to the point! Thanks”.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#67

Post by fn1 »

BeetleB wrote: post #63
hodgesrm wrote: post #11

I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote…

As a manager, you can probably get away with this. As an IC, people rarely read my emails if it doesn't fit in their screen (so 3 paragraphs is the max). The only thing I've found that works is to send details, and then probe the recipient on each important item in there to make sure they understood what I wrote. If I'm too detailed, they will get lost. If I'm very concise (but still complete ), they'll misinterpret.…

Have you tried putting each important sentence on it's own paragraph? Just the important ones.

That makes a difference in focus/readability.

Try it.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#68

Post by momokoko »

baby wrote: post #47
SkyPuncher wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it is at my company (100% remote). Having Zoom on stand-by is key for us. Anytime things get complicated, we just hop on a Zoom call. All of us can communicated well in writing, but I don't know of anyone on my team who prefers it. For me, in particular, I'm an incredibly slow writer, so it's just painful to write too much.

This doesn’t scale well, every time someone needs to understand, or onboards, or wants to audit a process then they have to go through that. It’s really hard to improve on something not documented.

I’m with a team that has scaled great with this approach and is now over 1,000 employees. Do you have any concrete research or even an anecdote about your statement?

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#69

Post by zten »

fn1 wrote: post #67
BeetleB wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a manager, you can probably get away with this. As an IC, people rarely read my emails if it doesn't fit in their screen (so 3 paragraphs is the max). The only thing I've found that works is to send details, and then probe the recipient on each important item in there to make sure they understood what I wrote. If I'm too detailed, they will get lost. If I'm very concise (but still complete ), they'll misinterpret.…

Have you tried putting each important sentence on it's own paragraph? Just the important ones. That makes a difference in focus/readability. Try it.

Take this too far and you end up writing broetry.

Re: To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills

#70

Post by spirobel »

adamnemecek wrote: post #40
daenz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strange comment. >this fetishization What part of Mr Tien's post implies that he fetishizes writing? I read it twice, the logic behind prioritizing writing skills in a remote-first world is reasonable. Why is it suddenly a fetish? >I don't think that people say this for example in Germany. What experience are you drawing this statement from? Are you saying people in Germany don't prioritize good writing ski…

The part where he says that writing matters for remote work. Like these types of articles tend to pop up in different contexts but it's always vague. I'm drawing on the experience that people in Germany don't talk about the importance of writing as much.

Can you speak German? I mean seriously, talk to any German boomer and he will tell you about correct orthography. Its his favorite topic.
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