Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

youteam.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 332 posts

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

#221

Post by Consultant32452 »

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…

One thing I often do is split an email into two parts, I'll even label them.

High Level Summary: 1-3 sentences that cover the main ideas, kind of an executive summary.

Details: the nitty gritty, full context, screenshots, etc.

People seem to really like this, each reader has the option to dive as deep as they need/want.

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

#222

Post by cblconfederate »

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…

Looks like a wiki would help

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

#223

Post by cik »

tchalla wrote: post #137
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.

> 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. I would like to understand why the reverse is "jumping the gun". I am assuming the arguments have not changed, the reasoning remains the same. Why is a mere…

While the solution may be valuable, there's more value in reading the work to get there. Rarely is the value a decision, inasmuch as the path to the decision. By first declaring a solution to a problem, you're priming the other individual. Depending on their personality you're priming them to be for, or against your decision.

By articulating the reasons, methods, and considerations that went into a decision, you're slowly and softly building an argument. Individuals are less likely to have an instinctive reaction to something this way. At the very least, it's proven (yes, as in measured) to be the case here.

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

#224

Post by lmilcin »

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…

That is only working if you are the only one doing this. If everybody in the team starts repeating everything very detailed, this soon becomes completely unproductive and ignored. Think one information mail from one system might be a good idea, but when you start getting 1000 automated mails every day like I get right now you are actually not informed at all.

The key to success is focusing on a small number of messages that you really want to get to people and then overcommunicating them.

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

#225

Post by known »

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…

We need to explicitly communicate Requirements + Expectations

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

#227

Post by rozab »

slumdev wrote: post #226

Programming ability is related more to language ability than to math: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8

This study used a 10 session beginner Python course, and was graded almost entirely with multiple choice quizzes rather than actual problem solving. Seems like they ended up testing participants' ability to quickly memorise syntax and language constructs rather than more general programming skills.

I have seen blog posts by middle/high school comp sci teachers saying that language skills are a greater predictor of success in their classes than maths, but it seems like this type of student is less likely to pursue a career in programming.

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

#228

Post by jagged-chisel »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #172
Nevaeh wrote: post #81

How do you feel about acronyms? Do they improve or hurt communication? From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that's bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is…

So does he propose that people always spell out the full name of all components? To me it comes across as selfish, he only wants people to use acronyms that he personally knows, even when they're not talking to him. For instance I work on aircraft. Basically every component has its acronym. Yes, it's hard when you're new to the area. But nobody is going to take the time to write or say "Integrated Drive Generator", "…

You'll say or write "Over-Pressure Shut-Off Vale" once, and then context now makes it possible to say "valve" for instances after. Unless you're discussing several valves at one, why does one need to use whatever acronym (with more syllables than the word 'valve')?

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

#229

Post by bachmeier »

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.…

> 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).

Without a doubt the first sentence is true. Successful written communication requires properly encoding the information (writing) and properly decoding it (reading). A flawed reading of an email means communication breaks down independent of the quality of the writing.

The second is also true, but incomplete. In many cases, there is a failure to read (either because of laziness or "I already know what he's going to say") or a language issue - even for native English speakers. It's not at all uncommon for someone to miss a "not", think "and" rather than "or", interpret "weeks" as "days" and so on.

Edit: One story that comes to mind is related to a policy our department was implementing a number of years ago. I sent an email with what I thought was minor supporting information. I got an angry reply of six paragraphs, totally irate that I would suggest something so crazy, listing all the ways I was wrong. I responded to say "I think you read my first sentence wrong." The response: "Oops!"

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

#230

Post by jagged-chisel »

roland35 wrote: post #200
Nevaeh wrote: post #81

How do you feel about acronyms? Do they improve or hurt communication? From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that's bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is…

TLAs (Three letter acronyms) are indeed the worst and I try to avoid using any custom ones as well. I worked with a company where the code base was all organized into folders like "MCM" and "PCM" for every module... Of course this list of acronyms was nowhere to be found. It was just one example of many of how big a mess their organization was.

What's worse is multiple unrelated definitions for the same acronym. I worked for an international industrial manufacturer, and their lexicon of acronyms and abbreviations contained many entries with more than one definition.
Post reply on HN