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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

#301

Post by nirvdrum »

vehe wrote: post #298
irahul wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The proxy in this case is your native language and seems to work rather well. No, it does not. The very notion that someone who always uses "its" and "it's" understands const-correctness is ridiculous. Command over native language doesn't signify programming prowess. You are imagining things or extrapolating your personal anecdotes to absolutes. Please provide citations if it's a proven fact. > For what it's worth,…

I think someone else pointed it out, it's a cultural affinity test. The shit about grammar indicating code quality is just rationalization for wanting someone who is culturally similar to you - has the same values as you. That is, someone who holds arbitrary things like grammar, facial hair, etc. in the same value as you do. Some of my coworkers are from India and China. I could make up similar things about how chewi…

No, it's as I stated initially. If you're unable to keep track of the rules of your native language, something that should be second nature, I have severe doubts about your ability to keep track of the rules in Scala, Ruby, or whatever else. If it's simply that you don't proofread or don't care to, I have no reason to believe you'll do so when dealing with code. That problem is exacerbated in dynamic languages where typos won't be caught until runtime. Both writing natural language and code are forms of expressing ideas, problems, & solutions cogently -- you just have different grammar forms for the various languages, each with their own rules. The two are even merging with things like Cucumber.

No, I don't have exhaustive studies on this. That neither proves nor disproves anything. I never stated any of this beyond my own opinion, which has been formed and reinforced by 15 years of working in open source, running & working at startups, and working at big companies.

That aside, code is typically only part of your job. Documentation, blog posts, interacting with customers, partners, team members, etc. are all part of engineering. You don't have to like it or think it's just, but people do and will form opinions about you on this stuff. Many times it won't be other engineers, which you may be fine with, but engineering alone often doesn't make a successful business. You can disagree with it or be flippant about it, but it really doesn't change reality.

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

#302

Post by nirvdrum »

nessus42 wrote: post #274
nirvdrum wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue is if you're unable to delineate between "it's" and "its" and it's the language you've been speaking natively for the past 25 years, I tend to doubt your ability to know what form of "const" to use in C++. At the very least, lack of proofreading suggests to me you might be rash with your code as well. Many disagree with me on this point of view, but routinely I've found that those that express themselves wel…

> Many disagree with me on this point of view, but routinely I've found that those that express themselves well in their native language write better code. Many people with perfect grammar communicate terribly, and many people with much less than perfect grammar communicate very effectively. If effective communication is important for a job position, perhaps looking directly for that skill would be more productive an…

Effective communication is important for every job position I've ever encountered. Whether it was when I was a porter at Dunkin' Donuts, a research assistant, a cog in the wheel at Cisco, or running my own company. At the very least, you need to be able to communicate effectively with the rest of your team and usually across departments.

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

#303

Post by nirvdrum »

nessus42 wrote: post #271
nirvdrum wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever you confuse the two, you cause me to have to reparse the sentence. "it's" becomes "it is" and then I have to determine that that doesn't make any sense and go back to substitute it. Vice versa. I also have a linguistics background. So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

> Whenever you confuse the two, you cause me to have to reparse the sentence. "it's" becomes "it is" and then I have to determine that that doesn't make any sense and go back to substitute it. I'm sorry. When they come up with a cure for dyslexia, I'll be sure to get it. In the meantime, I suspect that most people are just dyslexic enough (dyslexia is a spectrum) that these little things cause them a great deal of tr…

I guess I kept mine in tact by studying other languages and having to deal with people internationally. And my fondness for "The Elements of Style" and "On Writing" fostered it natively.

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

#304

Post by vehe »

nirvdrum wrote: post #301
vehe wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think someone else pointed it out, it's a cultural affinity test. The shit about grammar indicating code quality is just rationalization for wanting someone who is culturally similar to you - has the same values as you. That is, someone who holds arbitrary things like grammar, facial hair, etc. in the same value as you do. Some of my coworkers are from India and China. I could make up similar things about how chewi…

No, it's as I stated initially. If you're unable to keep track of the rules of your native language, something that should be second nature, I have severe doubts about your ability to keep track of the rules in Scala, Ruby, or whatever else. If it's simply that you don't proofread or don't care to, I have no reason to believe you'll do so when dealing with code. That problem is exacerbated in dynamic languages where…

> If it's simply that you don't proofread or don't care to, I have no reason to believe you'll do so when dealing with code.

Really. So all past experience on a person's resume doesn't count toward that? Every other aspect of your interview with that person cannot possibly lend anything to increase your belief that they proofread their code? That is quite irrational.

It's also irrational to assume that because someone doesn't keep track of grammar rules, that they are unable to do so. That's a pretty big mistake of an assumption.

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

#305

Post by nessus42 »

nirvdrum wrote: post #303
nessus42 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever you confuse the two, you cause me to have to reparse the sentence. "it's" becomes "it is" and then I have to determine that that doesn't make any sense and go back to substitute it. I'm sorry. When they come up with a cure for dyslexia, I'll be sure to get it. In the meantime, I suspect that most people are just dyslexic enough (dyslexia is a spectrum) that these little things cause them a great deal of tr…

I guess I kept mine in tact by studying other languages and having to deal with people internationally. And my fondness for "The Elements of Style" and "On Writing" fostered it natively.

I should think that dealing with people internationally would provide more tolerance for questionable grammar, not less, since non-native speakers of English typically make quite a few grammatical errors. Especially for irregular and idiomatic aspects of grammar.

Take those ignorant Brits, for example. They are always saying "different to" rather than "different from". That's much more annoying than using "it's" for "its", as it's not even pronounced the same way. And don't get my started on them misspelling "color" and "rumor".

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

#306

Post by einhverfr »

irahul wrote: post #290
einhverfr wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, consider "Are you responsible if papers were left on your desk?" Passive voice.

I don't know. English is a second language here in India, and the grammar covered in schools is pretty basic, and still I would wager most of people would recognize it's passive voice.

The reason why that error is so common among American English speakers though is that we are mistakenly taught that voices apply to sentences and so passive voice in a subordinate clause gets ignored. So you have the issue that "Are you responsible" is active voice but "if papers were left on your desk" is passive.

But this also gets to the problem of avoiding the passive voice which too many grammarians push, which is that there are times when the use of passive voice clarifies things.

The question, "Are you responsible if papers are left on your desk?" illustrates this very well. The questioner assumes it doesn't matter who left the papers on the desk, and there is no way to better word the sentence.

So in this discussion I have intentionally split infinitives (to emphasize that the goal is to do better at wording sentences), and illustrated why the passive voice is great, and in so doing have probably permanently disqualified myself from a job where grammar nazis rule.

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

#307

Post by irahul »

lotyrin wrote: post #296
irahul wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're writing more code than natural language (documentation, discussion of specs, interaction with the team, etc) something is extremely wrong. As long as we are just throwing claims around, I posit unless the code you write isn't 99% of what you write, something is extremely fucked up, and the orcs will take over the world. I don't see how your claim is more valid or invalid than mine. None of the claims are…

Perhaps, except that hypothetical code-hungry orcs are imaginary and have nothing to do with anything while the value of any of my very real examples is well understood by pretty much anyone. (Though - if you'll forgive me drawing further from our mystical beastiary - trolls might be an exception?) Edit to explain why I'm so dismissive: I think that it's a fairly accepted axiom that specified and documented projects…

> Perhaps, except that hypothetical code-hungry orcs are imaginary and have nothing to do with anything while the value of any of my very real examples is well understood by pretty much anyone.

What does this even mean? I don't see any real examples, and all you are doing is throwing more claims around. I missed the memo where you, and whoever this "everyone" else is were appointed authority on the value of anything for everyone else.

> Edit to explain why I'm so dismissive: I think that it's a fairly accepted axiom that specified and documented projects are easier to maintain than the alternative.

So a project with beautiful documentation and totally retarded code is easier to maintain? Documentation, more often than not, is for the end user. As far as code maintenance goes, the most important factor is proper abstractions and encapsulations. If you wrote a 5000 line, well commented method, it doesn't help me at all.

And a very specific set of projects lead itself to and require beforehand specs. Majority of the real world runs on "code is spec". Where is the spec for linux? Here is a little unknown someone's views on specs http://kerneltrap.org/node/5725 Where are the specs for rails, sinatra, django, flask? And how would it help if suddenly a rails specs came into being? You are confusing your little well with the world. Most projects design interfaces, not specs(activerecord, rails 4 queuing api etc)

Even your axiom holds(it doesn't, at all), how does that imply if you're writing more code than natural language (documentation, discussion of specs, interaction with the team, etc) something is extremely wrong.?

> Deriving my claim from these seems reasonable enough, to me, given the context of the discussion

> Not everything is science and while it might be nice to have 5-sigma data to reinforce my opinon, it fortunately doesn't need to be so reinforced in order to be valid, or even valid to be worth sharing.

I didn't ask for 5-sigma data. I asked for data which isn't personal anecdotes and viewpoints presented as truth.

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

#308

Post by pbhjpbhj »

UK-AL wrote: post #179
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're good at what they do and not an imbecile then couldn't you give them a lesson or two in grammar. I was never taught English grammar at school - French and Russian grammar but no English grammar beyond learning a poem about it at primary school. I was educated in England, English is my first language.

How can you never be taught grammar? There are two English gcses, English language and English Lit. One is about the technicalities of the language, the other about literature. Everyone has to do English Language....

There are indeed two GCSEs but crucially we had only one type of English lesson. We studied literature, poetry, wrote stories and poems of our own; did presentations, read plays, memorised Shakespearean monologues and such. But, barring that one poem in primary school I was never taught what an adverb is for example.

In French we'd look at past-participles and different tenses but never was it discussed what the pluperfect or future perfect was in English. In Russian we looked at locative and genitive, accusative and nominative cases (and others I'm sure) but in English there was never once a mention that anything such as a grammatical case existed. In school there was never a lesson on the apostrophe - reading Truss's tome [Eats, Shoots & Leaves] recently made me wonder why on Earth I couldn't have been passed something like that as a kid (I was a quite avid reader for many years but alas of course it wasn't written until 2006).

We did look at literary terms like onomatopoeia, alliteration, spoonerism and related concepts - metaphor, rhyming and timbre - that allow for analysis of poetry and prose.

Our English language classes, and exam incidentally, were about English usage and not really the language itself - the construction of language using English as the subject.

Grammar was just not in vogue at the time I feel. I've always felt however that being taught English grammar would have helped foreign language learning immeasurably.

FWIW I got high marks in both English exams (though I felt I was robbed by my teacher confusing me with the boy I sat next to!).

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

#309

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nollidge wrote: post #113
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…

That's not a grammar rule, it's a typographic one, and therefore subject to the house style of your publisher.

I'm not sure you can say it's typographic. One still uses quotations in handwritten prose where there is no arrangement of "type" per se. It seems syntactical to me but perhaps is best categorised as orthography?

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

#310

Post by Xcelerate »

quotemstr wrote: post #234
tokenadult wrote: post #94

Once again here on Hacker News we are talking about hiring procedures for technical companies. Many people find this topic interesting, because most of us have applied for a job at least once, and many of us have been in a position to recommend someone else for a job, or to hire someone for a job. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathere…

> If writing is not particularly part of the work, don't worry about it. I suspect the author is (perhaps unknowingly) using his grammar test as a proxy for general IQ. General IQ correlates _very_ well with performance across a broad spectrum of tasks. (The notion that there are different IQs for different areas of life, though sentimentally appealing, doesn't correspond to reality.) It's no surprise, then, that som…

It's a pity that you can't hire on the basis of general IQ. It almost seems discriminatory that you're being forced to not hire the best.
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