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

I hate long form writing with a passion. I barely got my decree because I hated writing that trite crap they call a thesis so much.

On the other hand I consider myself a good communicator, I can type a succinct email with a clear structure, I can create a damn fine Wiki page with indexes and all and I also communicate pretty well over text-based chats (started with IRC in the 90's).

Still, I couldn't write a 10 page report to save my life (still have one due for a course, been putting it off for 6 months now...)

I don't agree with everything DHH does or says, but the Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication is amazing: https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate

This is especially important now that people are working remotely and can't just quickly chat about things.

A few quotes:

#2 Real-time sometimes, asynchronous most of the time.

#3 Internal communication based on long-form writing, rather than a verbal tradition of meetings, speaking, and chatting, leads to a welcomed reduction in meetings, video conferences, calls, or other real-time opportunities to interrupt and be interrupted.

#16 "Now" is often the wrong time to say what just popped into your head. It's better to let it filter it through the sieve of time. What's left is the part worth saying.

It’s a bit like sending events to an unknown state machine.

You need add enough context for the event to be processed but you can’t know what will happen when it is...

I find that it isn't just the act of communication or writing that's important -- it's the person's ability to step outside their own bubble of code, jargon, details, and synthesize (whether up or down) to give someone else the essence of what they need to know about an issue or problem in that communication or writing. To be able to offer some decision, plan some work, take some conclusion from what has been done so far.

I encounter too many developers who simply start talking about the detailed issue at hand as if I've been working on it sitting aside them for the last week. Well, if that were the case, I would not need to talk to you about it.

When talking to someone not directly involved in your work, the point is that some level of abstraction is needed, and probably some decision is the reason for talking. People need synthesis and summary of the issues at hand, and not recitation at the details level.

This takes extra work and preparation, or at least mental organization -- to summarize for someone else what they need to take away from your details. It takes active effort to think about what your work or result or roadblock means for others, present options on what they should do, and you can tell easily when someone has thought through that next step, rather than just regurgitating what they've been working on all week.

That is a highly valuable skill and you know it when you encounter it.

A good maxim from safety critical industry: patronised is better than dead.