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I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

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Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#51

Post by klawed »

irahul wrote: post #17

My train of thoughts: > Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Whoa. Who do you think you are - google? What makes you think I am going to sit through your grammar test? If I am agreeing to your grammar test, either you are one of the most desirable places to work for(never heard of you), or economy is about to collapse and this is the only job…

>You must be fun to work with. A CEO whose litmus test to hir a programmer isn't programming finesse or cultural fit or drive..., but how good is his grammar.

Love the typo in your last line. Love it even more if it was unintentionl.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#53

Post by StavrosK »

einhverfr wrote: post #10

Now I want to know the following: 1) Will he hire people who can't tell active voice from passive? (Check out the Language Log archives for how many grammar and style nazis can't tell the difference.) 2) Does he require that you can tell who and whom apart and use them in their correct cases? If the answer is "yes" to both of these then I would assume that the people who pass the test are English majors with minors i…

Or have English as a second language.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#54

Post by allwein »

benihana wrote: post #40

Oh please. I can understand not hiring someone who communicates poorly. That makes sense. But grammar is just a set of arbitrary rules that some person or group of people decided were correct. It's like a secret handshake that lets people know you're part of some smart boys club (by and large it seems like men are the only ones who enjoy bitching about grammar). To me, it says, "I went to a good school system and was…

In general job X, that may be true. But when you're being hired at a company where your job is going to explicitly be writing clear technical prose, I don't think it's unimportant at all.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#55

Post by nollidge »

impendia wrote: post #28

Along these lines, let me ask advice from HN. I am buying a home in need of some repairs, and my real estate agent recommended a contractor whom he has personally used a lot. The contractor inspected the home and prepared a competitively priced five-figure estimate. From his estimate: "These conditions, if left to deteriate [sic] further, will make the building unsafe. ... The following recommended work is described…

Here is where I part from the OP. I do think of programming as a form of writing, and so I think it's OK to judge a programmer thusly, but I don't think it's got much to do with stocking shelves or plumbing or carpentry.

Moreover, based on your snippets that contractor has trouble with spelling errors, not grammar, which in my opinion is a different sort of skill altogether. Also I would not be surprised if he/she is dyslexic or similar.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#56

Post by einhverfr »

irahul wrote: post #23
einhverfr wrote: post #10

Now I want to know the following: 1) Will he hire people who can't tell active voice from passive? (Check out the Language Log archives for how many grammar and style nazis can't tell the difference.) 2) Does he require that you can tell who and whom apart and use them in their correct cases? If the answer is "yes" to both of these then I would assume that the people who pass the test are English majors with minors i…

> If the answer is "yes" to both of these then I would assume that the people who pass the test are English majors with minors in Linguistics ;-) I don't know. I am not a native speaker, and am not an English major, but the answer is "yes" to both of them. Am I understanding you correctly that you are saying people can't make out active and passive between "I wrote a letter", "A letter was written by me"? "Who" and "…

First, "whom" today is more or less reserved for formulaic usage. You write "To whom it may concern," but you don't say "Whom did you meet yesterday?" If you start rigidly using whom as objective (a use that Sapir noted was dying in 1912), you sound stilted and put people off. It's the sort of grammar nazi thing that alienates customers.

Similarly passive voice, split infinitives, etc. all sound like great rules until you realize that there are plenty of cases where these so-called rules are actually good to break. For example, perhaps his productivity would more than double if he would stop worrying about whether his employees split their infinitives.

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#58

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mkup wrote: post #22

Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance." She thinks that people who mix up their itses "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave," while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are otherwise qualified for the position. Putting comma inside quotation like the above could make grammar nazis happy, but when your newl…

I've never understood this putting punctuation that isn't part of a quote inside the quotation marks. It seems both wrong in terms of verity and in terms of logically constructing prose.

Can someone explain a rationale for this proclivity ?

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#59

Post by StavrosK »

debacle wrote: post #45
DannoHung wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? That's a rather phonetically spelt word, aside from the "s" sound at the end.

But why change the spelling? Maintainance looks much more logically correct.

Because that's pronounced "maintain-ance". Stress on the "ain".

Re: I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

#60

Post by StavrosK »

amackera wrote: post #31
kahawe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 90s are unfortunately long gone but the one good thing about this is that we could finally just NOT give ESR and his populism any more attention...

Could you expand a bit on this? I've read his Cathedral and Bazaar book, and quite enjoyed it. I didn't realize there was a whole context that I should be aware of.

I would also like this explained. I know very little about who ESR is.
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