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

171–180 of 332 posts

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

#171

Post by benhurmarcel »

abdusco wrote: post #130
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…

They are detrimental to understanding. I hate them with a passion. I see people using acronyms without explaining them in context, which makes it even more difficult to understand what's written. Some terms are jargon and are probably ubiquitous in the field, but unless I'm reading a text written for the professionals working in that field, I'd much rather see it explained.

> unless I'm reading a text written for the professionals working in that field

Most internal communication is made for professionals working in that field.

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

#172

Post by benhurmarcel »

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", "Power Control Unit", or "Over-Pressure Shut-Off Valve" every time. Everyone spends their day referring to components.

Most documents have a lexicon however, and there's a web interface to search them.

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

#173

Post by yodelshady »

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…

Judging by that, Elon Musk is a seriously smart man. I've worked at places with that tendency, and he's described the issue well.

Used too generously, acronyms make it impossible to gauge the complexity of the thing they're describing. Say that my system compromises a CCP, a SBS, and a RCS. That could mean "an afternoon and $1000" to "we need to build an entire supply chain". How do I begin to budget that, financially or mentally, based on three letters? Cynically, is that difficulty the point?

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

#174

Post by jzer0cool »

In a remote setting, over communicating is key.

Some signs that the candidate is good in communicating:

1. They number each point. This helps person replying to address each point separately.

2. When hiring, a candidate is asking a lot of questions. An email with a proactive communication is a win over another candidate that fails to communicate, is silent, or inability to communicate over writing.

This should allow for the responder, manager, whoever, to respond back and also synthesize whether follow up call is required. Writing is one channel for communication and can be efficient if done right.

I also found that non-english native speakers tend to write quite well. Superfluous words are omitted and usually the "essence" of the idea is straight to the point which makes it easy to clarify any ambiguity, if any. Whereas you might expect to literally take on face value what was written by a native speaker without hesitation.

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

#176

Post by innomatics »

soneca wrote: post #80

I believe I am a good writer. On my first job as a developer I kept getting very positive feedback on my writing. I ended up even starting a newsletter with writing advice for software developers[0]. So 4 months ago I started looking for a remote job. I applied to 250+ positions. All very suited to my skills (e.g. I wouldn’t apply to any job asking for “senior” or “fullstack”). I got about only ~15 interviews, 1 offe…

I wonder if the notion of a cover letter is waning in tech recruitment. Did you write a cover letter for those 250+ positions, and if so, I wonder who read it?

When I applied for IC roles in the past I put a fair amount of thought into writing a good cover letter. Now, as a hiring manager I am normally just passed resumes by internal or external recruiters.

The article has me thinking that it might be worth requesting to read the letter, but I believe it's optional, so I worry it might narrow the funnel too much. Also I am conscious that much, if not the majority of the talent pool in my region have English as a second language, so I'm keen not to judge formal writing skills excessively, which could exclude otherwise good informal communicators and coders.

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

#177

Post by benhurmarcel »

jennyyang wrote: post #41
dartdartdart wrote: post #21

Agree, but this does skew in favor of people who's first language is English, which shouldn't really be an indicator of engineering quality.

An engineer that can't communicate properly is a poor engineer, regardless of their coding ability. I've worked with too many great coders who were terrible at communicating. This includes engineers who were fluent at English. Communication is an extremely important skill. This is a reality of life. If I moved to Nigeria and could barely speak the language, should I expect people to accommodate my poor communication…

You never work with people working in different countries? In the same company, or just some partners (suppliers, customers…).

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

#178

Post by benhurmarcel »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #118
username90 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A great engineer who can’t communicate effectively with the team due to a language barrier isn’t a very useful team member. This is a much lesser bar than "strong English writing skills" that the article say you should require. "strong English writing skills" will force you to overlook most immigrants, but most of the great engineers in USA are immigrants so you'd handicap yourself by doing that.

You'd handicap yourself much worse by hiring people that you can't effectively communicate with.

You're not necessarily hiring people you're working with, even if you're hiring for your local office.

Say your company has an office in Germany, well you're going to communicate with colleagues whose native language is German. Or say your company decides to select a supplier from Japan, you have to communicate with them. You can't say they shouldn't have been hired in the first place.

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

#179

Post by Fnoord »

capableweb wrote: post #143
thesz wrote: post #122

And I think it supports Dijkstra's argument [1]: "Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer." https://twitter.com/CodeWisdom/status/1318597850411008006

Not sure why it's "one's native tongue" and not "same language as the people you work with", as many of us hardly use our native language once we move away from the country we were born in, especially when talking about programming.

Because mastering the native tongue shows the programmer was able to learn a lot of important basics at a very young age. Whereas the inability to master the native tongue shows a lack of education.

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

#180

Post by AQXt »

First of all, writing skills != good communication.

As someone else said, hire the person who actually knows how to get the job done -- even if they are not great writers.

(I don't think J. K. Rowling would be the best candidate for many jobs -- except, perhaps, writing.)

Post reply on HN