I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by adavies42 » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:23 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #117

AkThhhpppt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's How It's Done. Programmers are almost the only people who routinely break it - because we're used to quoted strings being atomic units.

So there's no rationale beyond convention? Other linguistic conventions get changed so why is this one sticking around and why do its supporters promote it - is the more logical [to me] method somehow confusing?

it's old printers' stuff to do with physical properties of lead type, i think. as to why it won't go away, i have no idea. i happily ignore it in almost all my writing....

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

#222

Post by shaggyfrog » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:24 PM UTC

clarkevans wrote: post #63

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 a…

The one time I hired a home inspector, I got the report by the end of the 3-hour appointment, printed up by his laptop and portable printer. It wasn't until I read your comment that I now know how what a good thing that was.

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

#223

Post by excuse-me » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:24 PM UTC

ricardonunez wrote: post #176

My mother thong is Spanish, I also know English, Portuguese and some Italian. I'm not a good in either language. In the last few years I put a lot of time in getting better at English. By reading that post and some comments you will assume I don't read, I'm lazy, slow learner, sloppy and unmotivated. Proper grammar is important, but I'll not make it a priority while looking for talent.

It should be "your mother's thong is Spanish"

However in the USA it's unusual to take the provenance of parental lingerie into account in the hiring process.

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

#224

Post by hythloday » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:27 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #183

hythloday wrote: post #126

Just to illustrate what a morass "poor grammar" is, I have, wearing my ex-professional proofreader hat, gone through the article to highlight the areas where I could find fault with the article for incorrect usage. People Who Use Poor Grammar should be: People Who Use Grammar Poorly. I have a "zero tolerance approach" should be: I have a zero-tolerance approach. people who mix up their itses should be: people who mix…

All the examples you cite are stylistic choices and have nothing to do with "grammar". (I also personally disagree with all your suggested edits, especially the first.) Using Hungarian notation in C may be poor style, but it conforms to the C grammar.

For clarity, when I talk about "grammar" here I'm talking about what Wikipedia calls "orthography", which is what I think the OP was talking about. You're right that #1 is a style correction and #3 is a typographic correction--on the other hand #2 is unambiguously orthogaphic[0], even if it's not as well known as it's/its, and if the writer feels justified in making up "itses" to mean "it's and its", presumably because people can infer what it means from context, that puts them in a very shaky position as a prescriptivist.

The interesting point that I'm trying to make isn't that that author is wrong or right, because I don't really care much about slips in orthography. It's that once you take a prescriptivist stance you're either making an appeal to popularity or you're entering an arse-kicking contest with a seven-legged monster with no arse.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound#Hyphenated_com...

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

#225

Post by l3amm » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:27 PM UTC

The comments have become a firestorm of grammar-as-a-filter for programmers. While this is an interesting debate, I think there are three things about this filter that give it value:

1) Grammar serves as a cultural touchstone in the company, so using a grammar test in hiring is a strong signal to employees and future employees about what we as a company stand for. If you apply to this job and you disregard grammar freely (guilty as charged) you will not fit into this organization. It's a fast filter on both ends: I won't take the test, and if I did you would reject me immediately. Excellent.

2) It is a binary, non-complex test. You write the test once and there is a unambiguous right and wrong answer, if you get the questions right you pass, if you don't you are rejected. This has several benefits:

Applicants: They know this is coming and can prepare/not prepare for it. The test is objective, so they can't really argue with its validity. At one point they probably knew this material, meaning that an hour of time to prepare for the finer points of colons/semi-colons is probably doable if they really want the job.

Employer: Since the answers are unambiguous this filter is easy to use: passed candidates go through. There is no subjectivity around assessing a candidate using a resume or cover letter. In my experience (CEO in hiring efficiency space) this easily-actionable filter means that the task at hand will actually get done. If you watch recruiters try to parse through 200+ resumes against a job req, they will stop after 10-15. They might come back to it on another day, or they might not. Either way the applicant pipeline stops dead on their desk. It's frustrating for the recruiter because the task becomes "analyze this free-text against a free-text requisition and then filter this list of 200 people down to 20."

The reality of this situation is that most resumes don't get read and the person who ends up getting the job is one of the first 20 that were read. Obviously this situation is non-ideal, so I generally advocate an objective, simple filter as the first step to any process (before looking at resume.) Internal recruiters, in their heart of hearts, want to find the best applicant in the bunch, if you don't give them the tools to do their job then they won't.

3) They've thought about their process and institutionalized it. When I see a company that has thought seriously about the filter stage of the process then I know: a) they care about their employees' time b) they care about quality applicant's and the culture they project in the hiring process c) they have probably thought about all stages of the hiring process so things are likely to move quickly and smoothly.

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

#226

Post by creamyhorror » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:35 PM UTC

hkolek wrote: post #79

einhverfr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view the ability to structure communications is important. I don't think that's the same as being a grammar nazi. For example if you have a zero tolerance policy for it's vs its, or for commas making things confusing, the framers of the US Constitution would fail the test. Not only is 'it's' is used as a possessive but try to parse this: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United State…

I don't know, I don't think your example sentence is particularly hard to parse, and I'm not a native speaker. But I have to say, even as a non-native speaker, I just can't understand whats hard about "its" and "it's" and "their", "there" and "they're" and it makes me cringe every time to read such mistakes (as does confusing "loose" with "lose"). That said, I don't expect perfection but if I read a text that is litt…

I still cringe at all the "would of"s and incorrect "your"s and "their" on the Net. As an English speaker from outside the US, these aren't mistakes I commonly see in my country, and they grate. I'm like you - I find it arduous and irritating to read a passage littered with them, because each one pops up and distracts me.

That said, if I were hiring programmers, I wouldn't go by grammar. Business concerns and core capabilities come first. If the person makes mistakes but does the job best, no biggie. It all comes down to the situation in the labour market - does demand for programmers exceed supply, or vice versa? If I were flooded with good potential applicants then I'd weight grammar more heavily as a differentiating factor - but since good programmers are hard to come by currently, it's just pointless to do so.

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

#227

Post by EternalFury » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:37 PM UTC

Bravo!

Poor grammar is the telltale sign of other impediments that hinder the practice of any activity that requires good attention to details.

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

#228

Post by eropple » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:38 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #185

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…

Here's a thought: you're assuming I care equally about grammar and programming. If I use the wrong form of "it's" in a sentence, someone might wince somewhere (possible even rage a bit). No one is going to die. If I use the wrong form of const, it's possible that all hell will rain down upon the Earth and millions will die in horrible gut-wrenching pain, clasping their loved ones to their chest and bemoaning the gods…

If you don't care equally about grammar and programming, then you aren't wanted. You can no doubt latch onto a dev shop that doesn't care about that.

I don't see the problem and I admire the attitude. Use of the written word is important and, aside from the exceptions mentioned in the article, I think significantly less of people who don't write or speak well. It's important to me to work with good communicators and you can't be a good communicator if you can't speak and write well.

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

#229

Post by rprasad » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:40 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #135

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…

Great post. Thought this was interesting from the Schmidt & Hunter article: "This meta-analysis found that the validity of GMA for predicting job performance was .58 for professional managerial jobs, .56 for high level complex technical jobs, .51 for medium complexity jobs, .40 for semi-skilled jobs, and .23 for completely unskilled jobs." Apparently having a high IQ is a better predictor of being a good business guy…

Take any "meta-analysis" with a large grain of salt (or better yet, and industrial size vat of salt).

Meta-analysis suggests that men under the age of 26 have a 60% chance of being sex offenders. This same type of meta-analysis is also the reason that all sex crime offenders (including drunk people pissing in a park and amorous couples getting it on in a dark parkin glot) are lumped together for sex offender registration purposes, because the meta-analysis suggests that the recidivism rate for "sex offenders" (regardless of actual offense) is greater than 90% (without regard to the actual recidivist offense).

TLDR: Meta-analysis can be used to support any claim.

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

#230

Post by quotemstr » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 4:41 PM UTC

hythloday wrote: post #224

quotemstr wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the examples you cite are stylistic choices and have nothing to do with "grammar". (I also personally disagree with all your suggested edits, especially the first.) Using Hungarian notation in C may be poor style, but it conforms to the C grammar.

For clarity, when I talk about "grammar" here I'm talking about what Wikipedia calls "orthography", which is what I think the OP was talking about. You're right that #1 is a style correction and #3 is a typographic correction--on the other hand #2 is unambiguously orthogaphic[0], even if it's not as well known as it's/its, and if the writer feels justified in making up "itses" to mean "it's and its", presumably becau…

> once you take a prescriptivist stance you're either making an appeal to popularity or you're entering an arse-kicking contest with a seven-legged monster with no arse.

That's an extreme and unjustified dichotomy. The article is written in an informal linguistic register, not in the voice of a 19th century naturalist writing for the Royal Society. (Is my use of the passive voice in the previous sentence also "incorrect" because style guides frown upon it?)

Still, the article's language is clear, precise, and suggests that the author takes pains to accurately communicate his thoughts. We haven't seen the author's grammar test. I would suspect that it tests the kind of linguistic economy I'm talking about, not whether the test-taker has memorized obscure passages from Strunk and White. As such, the test is probably effective at eliminating candidates who don't give a damn about correctness.