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Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

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Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#151

Post by prostoalex »

nashequilibrium wrote: post #85
pg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not our top criterion. It's just one that I'm willing to talk about publicly, because there's no way to fake it. We're not against funding people from outside the US, and we fund a lot of them. But 564 startups is enough to see patterns, and the empirical evidence about very strong accents is striking. And I am talking about failure to communicate here. I don't mean strong accents in the sense that it's clear th…

It's a good thing you not a football manager, imagine Lionel Messi, Ronaldo,Zinnedine Zidane or Ronaldhino coming to your team. These are some of the best footballers in the world, all speak different languages but can walk on a field in England and beat an offside trap, request a pin point pass through top rated defenders at a speed of 100mph. Most people just don't want to take the time to try and understand someon…

How many sales meetings a day does an average football player take?

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#152

Post by larrys »

NhanH wrote: post #57
larrys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent" Specifically "clueless". I agree with that but I also think it's an attitude as well in some people. I think even if it was explained to them they might not think that it would benefit them. In that case they are not clueless they are simply rigid in their thinking, right? As the saying goes "when in rome do as the romans do" Along those l…

I've actually asked some American (one of them being my boss) on whether I should be using an American name to make it easier for everyone at work. I received two "It's weird" answers, and haven't asked the third person yet. Considering that my name is relative short (the first 4 letter of my username, Americans tend to remember the "h" and "a"'s position swapped though), would you consider it a difficult name to rem…

If it's "nhan" that's fine and maybe even a little exotic (which could be a plus). Would depend also on what your last name is in combination of course.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#153

Post by checker659 »

snoonan wrote: post #146
checker659 wrote: post #124

So, one of the purposes of the application video is to judge a person's accent? Is that fair?

What would fairness have to do with the success of a startup? Put two founders on stage at a conference and the audience won't be fair either. Extend that to other events, web video, TV appearances and other audio/video media. He's not in a position to change other people's prejudice with his investments.

By "Is that fair", I meant: Is that fair to say? As in, is that what it means (?).

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#154

Post by philwelch »

segmondy wrote: post #137
philwelch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I ever had to live and work in a foreign country, I'd be proud to speak their language so fluently they couldn't quite detect an accent. It would be a little different moving to another English-speaking country, but lots of people end up picking up a slightly different accent after living someplace for a long time. It doesn't have to be a matter of identity unless you choose to make it one.

Until you move to a foreign country and speak with their language so fluently that they can't detect your accent. You need to come back to reality. If it was so easy, everyone would be doing it.

Sure, it's not easy and you'd probably have a recognizable accent unless you worked hard at it. But speaking e.g. French in a thick American accent is a stupid thing to incorporate into your self-identity, just like speaking English in a thick French accent.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#155

Post by querulous »

NhanH wrote: post #55
sunir wrote: post #18

I'm really disappointed that this was Paul's top of mind criterion for rejection, "One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent." That reminds me of an incident earlier in my career when a recruiter ranked candidates on their 'communication skills', which really was a proxy for whether they were an immigrant or not, in order to try to avoid discrimination laws. http://www.freshbook…

Can anyone here share their experience on how they get rid of their accent? As a non-native speaker, there are some phonemes that are just straight up unrecognisable for me : "h" - "x", "war" - "wall", "word" - "world" to name a few. I recognized the problem about a year ago and has been trying to figure it out since then, albeit without much success.

there are a few phonemes that are hard for me to discriminate but i've found asking friends who can discriminate to describe the physical arrangement of their lips/tongue for each of the sounds helps. i still can't discriminate between the sounds of certain phonemes but i can discriminate between how they feel when i vocalize them

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#156

Post by segmondy »

gbog wrote: post #145
znt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had read this reply 3 years ago, I would have called you "racist". But after spending time with engineers from different countries, I believe having an understandable English accent is not a nice thing to have, but rather a professional responsibility. I have personally witnessed people losing their jobs/contracts because of this issue, and although I enjoyed their friendship, I wasn't really sorry for losing a…

> having understandable English accent Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent? If the later, I fully agree and this apply the most to US citizens. Last week I was having beer with two friend (one US one Canada) and a guy from LA came by, and it was completely impossible to me to understand one single word in his sentences (except for "fuck" and variants, which convey no meaning). He didn…

You are correct, "Indian English" or any type of english has as much right as say "British or American English" but the issue and reason pg could make such a statement is that American money is calling the shots.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#157

Post by segmondy »

znt wrote: post #150
gbog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having understandable English accent Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent? If the later, I fully agree and this apply the most to US citizens. Last week I was having beer with two friend (one US one Canada) and a guy from LA came by, and it was completely impossible to me to understand one single word in his sentences (except for "fuck" and variants, which convey no meaning). He didn…

> Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent? I mean anyone who can pronounce words in English without causing you to interrupt them often, and ask to repeat themselves, regardless of their accent. Another sad thing about this is the lack of "negative" feedback these people get, about their inability to communicate. Most often native speakers are just too "kind", no one will ever say "I did…

You can ask someone to please speak slowly, but to ask them to pronounce words correctly?

PUHLEASE!

Listen, people pronounce as correctly as they know how to. Do you know why people have an accent? It's because they can barely here the difference between sounds that sound alike, so they pronounce them the same. Many speaks of English around the world. Can't hear the th sound, they hear t or d. so they say tink instead of THing or Dis instead of THis. If you ask them to pronounce clearly, they will repeat the same thing over and over until they actually are taught to differenciate the sound. Until they can learn to hear it, isolate it, learn to reposition their tongue, mouth movement, etc. They won't be able to pronounce it "correctly"

Besides if they can do all that, that's still not enough, stressing the wrong part of a word, note, word not even sentence, can be a reason for you not to understand them. If they knew how to pronounce every single world the american way and stress it. If they don't link it or use the american intonation, you could still have a terrible hard time understanding them, unless they speak in an absolute monotone voice where it sounds like they are reading from a word list. That in itself is not easy as well.

It's not easy to acquire any accent, until you try it as an adult. You won't understand.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#158

Post by JVIDEL »

sunir wrote: post #18

I'm really disappointed that this was Paul's top of mind criterion for rejection, "One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent." That reminds me of an incident earlier in my career when a recruiter ranked candidates on their 'communication skills', which really was a proxy for whether they were an immigrant or not, in order to try to avoid discrimination laws. http://www.freshbook…

I totally get your point, I just got a bunch of BS from a washed-up speech coach (who ironically is also foreign and with a noticeable accent) because of my accent.

I think the problem is the attitude: when I speak in my language with english speakers who are just learning it I go the extra mile to understand their broken accent and mispronunciation and not be too upfront when correcting them.

On the other hand when I see foreign founders with a thick accent pitching something I can sometimes see some faces in the public changing from a neutral "let's see what this guy is working on" to a decidedly negative "oh not another [insert term here]]".

Is there bias? yes there is, I could tell all english speakers trying to speak spanish "shut up your accent is horrible!" but I refrain from doing so out of cordiality. Maybe its a cultural thing, because over here that cordiality rarely exists.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#159

Post by JVIDEL »

znt wrote: post #150
gbog wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having understandable English accent Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent? If the later, I fully agree and this apply the most to US citizens. Last week I was having beer with two friend (one US one Canada) and a guy from LA came by, and it was completely impossible to me to understand one single word in his sentences (except for "fuck" and variants, which convey no meaning). He didn…

> Do you mean American mumbling accent or International English accent? I mean anyone who can pronounce words in English without causing you to interrupt them often, and ask to repeat themselves, regardless of their accent. Another sad thing about this is the lack of "negative" feedback these people get, about their inability to communicate. Most often native speakers are just too "kind", no one will ever say "I did…

I got TONS of negative feedback at first, people here would make zero effort to try to understand me, typical "not my problem" attitude. What I didn't get was any CONSTRUCTIVE feedback to know what I was doing wrong, I had to figure it our by myself and fix it.

Re: Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth

#160

Post by oskarth »

jmtame wrote: post #72
pg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked about this on another thread, but by strong accent I mean so strong that people have a hard time understanding you. It's not a problem if founders have accents as strong as, say, the Collison brothers'.

It's not that bad that Patrick has the accent, but he talks really fast. I struggled to listen to his talk at Hacker School. I have talked to him solo in person and understood him fairly well; maybe it was just the auditorium.

Do you mean Startup School? I don't recall him talking at Hacker School.
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