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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

#111

Post by tayo42 »

cik wrote: post #95
shalmanese wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an IC, people rarely read my emails if it doesn't fit in their screen (so 3 paragraphs is the max). You need to learn how to restructure your writing. Most logical people naturally write in a way where it’s premise, premise, premise, conclusion. Instead, you need to write conclusion, premise, premise, premise. One way I’ve found to help my team learn to write this way is to institute a rule that any writing long…

This echoes OPs point about culture. One absolutely should not do what you've mentioned in my location. Here we lay out the arguments, and the conclusion at the end. The reverse is seen as jumping the gun, and not being well reasoned. It is looked down upon, and frequently discounted immediately. Cultural bias is very much a thing.

How is that cultural? Even through elementary school we were taught to have an intro with what your point is, follow up with supporting arguments, then conclude by reiterating the point the you made.

How could you read anything without knowing the point in the beginning. Even research papers start off with an abstract.

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

#112

Post by rmk »

Pasorrijer wrote: post #3
josephmosby wrote: post #2

Eng 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.

It depends. A person who doesn’t want to learn doesn’t pick up either, in my experience. On the other hand, having a style guide helps in coding, and it helps everyone express ideas using a uniform style and idiom, which enables a lot of implicit communication via the code itself. Training people would entail pointing to the style guide.

A big caveat is that you need a team or larger organization where this has already been set up, and that the hires need to be the kind of people who can take direction. It will fail miserably if even one of the above is untrue.

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

#113

Post by watwut »

tayo42 wrote: post #111
cik wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This echoes OPs point about culture. One absolutely should not do what you've mentioned in my location. Here we lay out the arguments, and the conclusion at the end. The reverse is seen as jumping the gun, and not being well reasoned. It is looked down upon, and frequently discounted immediately. Cultural bias is very much a thing.

How is that cultural? Even through elementary school we were taught to have an intro with what your point is, follow up with supporting arguments, then conclude by reiterating the point the you made. How could you read anything without knowing the point in the beginning. Even research papers start off with an abstract.

The fact that you was taught that in elementary school and thus literally concluded that it is impossible to read something without knowing conclusion first is what makes it cultural. The fact that he and everyone around him sees conclusion up front as jumping the gun and likely was taught that structure in school, is what makes it cultural.

> How could you read anything without knowing the point in the beginning. Even research papers start off with an abstract.

It is pretty easy to read email or argument without knowing the conclusion up front. You just read on. Research papers are specific writing with specific rules. I dont really think they are in general example of good or persuasive writing.

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

#114

Post by benjaminsuch »

capableweb wrote: post #93
soneca wrote: post #80

I believe I am a good writer. On my first job as a developer I kept getting very positive feedback on my writing. I ended up even starting a newsletter with writing advice for software developers[0]. So 4 months ago I started looking for a remote job. I applied to 250+ positions. All very suited to my skills (e.g. I wouldn’t apply to any job asking for “senior” or “fullstack”). I got about only ~15 interviews, 1 offe…

> I applied to 250+ positions That sounds wrong. It's common, but it still sounds wrong to me. When I look for new jobs, I find a couple of companies (3-4) that match with what I'm looking for exactly, read up on the companies, tell them explicitly how I fit into what they need and write them personally. I have a 100% success rate when it comes to interviews, and most of the time I get a offer, but drop out when my c…

Not sure why he is getting downvoted, but I agree. I did the same, without having a degree. Telling companies why you fit and why they should hire you has a huge effect, especially if you compete with people who come from a university with a degree in their pocket.

Explaining a company why you are a great fit and directly write the responsible person in HR shows, that you:

1. Did not blindly sent out hundreds of applications 2. Gathered information about what the company does and evaluate your fit in consideration of your skillset 3. Contact the right person

The 2. point is the most important one. Now, where I am in the position of hiring people, I would gladly take someone who tells me, thoughtful reasons of why we should hire him. But also don't underestimate the 3. point. Don't message the head of HR or similar persons. Instead write the people who will potentially be your lead.

But it also depends where you apply. A big corporation? A startup? Government? Something else?

The parent comment is correct regardless: Target-focus

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

#115

Post by andy_ppp »

I find this trope quite boring; you know who is good, people who can code, people with high IQs and people with the right experience. Being able to write is probably about the same as people who can design as well as code. Sure it’ll be useful but hiring experts in these areas should be your ultimate goal. No startup was killed ever by a bad prose style.

So after reading the article (ha imagine) it is are NOT about writing ability, they talk about the company prioritising documentation and communication. Documentation, sure, but communication is another truism I don’t have much time for; we’ve all worked with extremely productive clever programmers who don’t communicate well, if you’re a founder getting the best from each persons character might be better than just hiring only extroverts.

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

#116

Post by seventhtiger »

ergocoder wrote: post #36
bathtub365 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it skews towards English speakers in particular: it actually skews towards strong communicators in the preferred communication language of the team. A great engineer who can’t communicate effectively with the team due to a language barrier isn’t a very useful team member. It’s tempting to think that technical ability should be the sole measure of someone’s worth as a engineer but that simply not true ou…

But English skill is a major component of being a strong communicator in English. Native English speakers who practice speaking English every minute of their lives would be at a huge advantage.

Not necessarily. English as a second language speakers who may have a accent or take longer to formulate their responses are at a disadvantage in person. I've met many who have expansive vocabularies and impeccable grammar, and I am one myself, but it's hard for us to get over the first impression of the accent and to formulate our responses with natural timing.

For us writing sets a level playing field.

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

#117

Post by alxlaz »

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.

After enough years in a corporate setting I can guarantee that this has the opposite effect, because it makes it even less likely for your email to fit on a screen so it just gets skipped.

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

#118

Post by AmericanChopper »

username90 wrote: post #92
bathtub365 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it skews towards English speakers in particular: it actually skews towards strong communicators in the preferred communication language of the team. A great engineer who can’t communicate effectively with the team due to a language barrier isn’t a very useful team member. It’s tempting to think that technical ability should be the sole measure of someone’s worth as a engineer but that simply not true ou…

> A great engineer who can’t communicate effectively with the team due to a language barrier isn’t a very useful team member. This is a much lesser bar than "strong English writing skills" that the article say you should require. "strong English writing skills" will force you to overlook most immigrants, but most of the great engineers in USA are immigrants so you'd handicap yourself by doing that.

You'd handicap yourself much worse by hiring people that you can't effectively communicate with.

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

#119

Post by chuckcode »

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…

Please write a collaborative doc instead of an email if you have that much detail. Having an effective discussion over email is actively painful and worse yet no one can refer back to your detailed documentation later.

Good on you for communicating. Personally I've found that details are great, but being able to distill that core message down to a quick code really helps. Call it an elevator pitch, sound bite or whatever but it is really transformative. So much communication seems to be just passing along a historically linear repeat of facts rather than helping reader by distilling down.

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

#120

Post by comprev »

soneca wrote: post #102
capableweb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I applied to 250+ positions That sounds wrong. It's common, but it still sounds wrong to me. When I look for new jobs, I find a couple of companies (3-4) that match with what I'm looking for exactly, read up on the companies, tell them explicitly how I fit into what they need and write them personally. I have a 100% success rate when it comes to interviews, and most of the time I get a offer, but drop out when my c…

”I’m sure your success rate will improve then” I think you are wrong. I don’t have a CS degree, I don’t have top brand college or employer. You also assume wrong that I didn’t dedicated myself to apply to specific jobs where I was a very good fit. I did that. And it didn’t got me offers. If you tell me more about your profile, I am sure I can pinpoint why you get 100% success rate and I don’t. I am pretty sure it is…

Your comments echo what many who are currently employed say. When the shoe is on the other foot though, and unemployed, you can almost guarantee they will have applied to 100+ roles!
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