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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

#61

Post by irahul »

Sunlis wrote: post #44
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…

What's so bad about a grammar test? Any competent person (excluding extenuating circumstances: dyslexia, etc.) should be able to pass a simple grammar test. It's not some hardship that you have to study for or anything.

It's more like I am applying for a programming job, and I don't see why I have to subject myself to your whims.

Consider that instead of grammar, I am advocating I will only hire people who can do 50 push-ups. After all, what can I expect from people who are sloppy towards something as important their own bodies. What's so bad about 50 push-ups? Any fit person(excluding extenuating circumstances) should be able to do 50 push-ups.

The thing is, I don't see the correlation between grammar and the job I am supposed to do, but more importantly, by doing that, you aren't warranting me the respect I believe I deserve. I have a particular job and screening procedure in mind. If you ask me to skip rope, irrespective of my ability do so, I will have to deny.

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

#62

Post by klawed »

Sunlis wrote: post #44
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…

What's so bad about a grammar test? Any competent person (excluding extenuating circumstances: dyslexia, etc.) should be able to pass a simple grammar test. It's not some hardship that you have to study for or anything.

What's so bad about it is that unfounded assumptions are being drawn from the performance of said test. Any competent person should be able to make a bed neatly and quickly. Would you apply for a (non-hospitalitly-related)job that required you to demonstrate your bed-making abilities?

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

#63

Post by clarkevans »

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…

Funny, I prefer misspelled to incorrectly corrected. Nothing worse than having a document littered with poor word substitutions -- at least with a spelling error I could know a bit more what the writer intended.

Speaking of home purchases, if I were to do it again, I'd get two home inspections. My primary inspector for my current house completely missed very expensive (and relatively standard/easy to check) masonry and electrical deficiencies that were not up-to-code. His report was meticulous... perhaps because it wasn't prepared by him, but by an intermediary in the same office?

On this topic, I think that being able to communicate clearly is an essential skill. Poor grammar hurts, although not anywhere as bad as completely poor analysis. However, if you're going to rank someone on grammar, you should also rank them on their visual/spacial diagramming skills. A good diagram can communicate much more effectively than text. I'd rather have someone who is good at both language and diagrams than someone who is an excellent writer but unable to illustrate visually.

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

#64

Post by devb »

klawed wrote: post #51
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.

There are far too many typos and grammar errors in that post for its writer to be playing around. I think someone is bitter about their poor grasp of grammar constructs.

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

#65

Post by rytis »

UK-AlasGou wrote: post #52

Grammar can often be so complex, that you can get experts who disagree with each other.

Grammar is a set of agreed rules, therefore it is not set in stone. Someone might disagree with the rules, and that leads to a slightly different grammar. And so on and so forth. Effectively, everyone has their 'own' grammar that they use. IMHO (especially not being a native English speaker) this article is rubbish (it's in URL BTW). One needs to know his grammar to write articles, but for a developer position? Don't think so.

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

#66

Post by UK-AlasGou »

allwein wrote: post #54
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.

But he stated it should be recommended for most companies too.

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

dedward wrote: post #50
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…

It's not a sneak test - it's an actual grammar test. If you are asked to document something, and you can't observe basic english grammar, I see a problem too. Zero tolerance may be taking it a bit too far, but one would imagine he can tell the difference between a typo in a big test and actual fundamental lack of knowledge of the grammar you should have learned by the time you were 14. (Yes, the double space after th…

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by DrJokepu »

When I screen, interview and hire people, I look for reasons to hire someone as opposed to trying to find reasons to disqualify people. This kind of negative approach (especially when dealing with people) is just not a good way to go about things in my opinion and experience.

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

#69

Post by bguthrie »

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…

This is very much a cultural fit test. If people who use poor grammar are going to drive the author nuts, then as the the person running the company I think he's perfectly justified in treating the candidate as a poor cultural fit.

Additionally, as someone who employs writers as well as programmers, he might reasonably want to hire a programmer who is also a writer for the same reason that you'd want to hire a programmer who also has ops experience: it makes them a more appealing hire for the kinds of problems his startup is trying to solve.

In short, I don't see the problem.

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

#70

Post by RobAley »

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.

For some, it's his views on homaphobia[1], and his views on race[2]. For others, it's his lack of actually doing anything useful recently.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157324 [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3826846

The link in [2] is dead, it previously linked to http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4270

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