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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

#31

Post by amackera »

kahawe wrote: post #21
hkolek wrote: post #12

I agree. I think Eric S. Raymond nails it: "While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong — and we have no use for sloppy thinkers." http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

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.

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

#32

Post by irahul »

s_henry_paulson wrote: post #8

I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument: Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Either that or a sign of an unwillingness to learn. Both of these are red flags when hiring. On the other hand, if your "zero tolerance" policy includes things like my usage of an oxford comma, chances are I don't want to work for you.

Saving the google search for people who don't know what an oxford comma is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma

"Portugal, Spain, and France" (Oxford comma) "Portugal, Spain and France" (Not Oxford comma)

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

#33

Post by ctdonath »

espinchi wrote: post #7

I do the same: unstructured e-mails, poor grammar and, in general, bad writing style make me reject applicants instantaneously. However, I wonder if I'm letting good candidates go just because of my grammar nazism. How do you (folks in HN with more experience at hiring) feel about this?

Would you rather miss hiring a good candidate? or hire a bad one? Easier to recover from the former mistake than the latter.

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

#34

Post by irahul »

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…

> But my real estate agent thinks I'm making a big deal out of nothing. Anyone have thoughts, experience, opinions, advice?

If you (trust|know|have worked with) your real estate agent, and he is vouching for the bag grammar and spelling guy, how does the bad grammar and spelling matter?

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

#35

Post by einhverfr »

s_henry_paulson wrote: post #8

I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument: Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Either that or a sign of an unwillingness to learn. Both of these are red flags when hiring. On the other hand, if your "zero tolerance" policy includes things like my usage of an oxford comma, chances are I don't want to work for you.

Dude, I so want to go there, apply, and write at the bottom of the page:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." -- And that's the law of the land. Please try to parse that until your head explodes.

Edit: I think I would add to that "Also, in your opinion does this mean that once you have been in the country for 14 years you are no longer eligible to be President?"

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

#36

Post by irahul »

philbarr wrote: post #20
rheide wrote: post #6

I think that's perfectly reasonable. Although I'm not a native speaker I quickly get annoyed at people's inability to form proper sentences. But only in formal situations, such as the job application scenario in the original article. I went to a Barclays bank in the UK the other day to try and open a business account. One of the main reasons I didn't go with them was that the guy who was going to be my 'personal bank…

It's amazing how many times I see the word "devloper". Maybe having to type "e" twice so close together is what causes the typo..?

I think it's more phonetic in nature. That isn't a mistake you will see often in India. We say all letters loud and clear:)

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

#37

Post by columbo »

Poor grammar (i wuld leik to apply 4 jorb) is an acceptable thing to use when rejecting a candidate.

With that said, I have no interest in a writing career and I'm getting tired of reading about all these new and creative ways to take interviews as far from the subject matter as possible.

And finally, anyone who considers their experience set the baseline of which everyone should aspire to isn't someone I would be interested in working for. You're a professional writer. Good for you. I'm not. How about we take your ego out of this process and actually talk about something related to the position.

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

#38

Post by GFischer »

mgkimsal wrote: post #4
ColinWright wrote: post #2

This is the take-away point for me: > Everyone says they're detail-oriented in an > application; I just make my employees prove it. CVs are great, certifications and qualifications are great, but if you claim you can do something, I want to see the evidence. When I'm hiring I want to see that the candidate has * ... thought about what I will want and/or need, * ... makes direct claims that they can provide it/them, a…

"Show me you understand the job you're applying for, then provide evidence that you can do it." In return, I ask that an employer provide some substantive description of what I'll be doing, giving me the opportunity to think about it. Actual job posting I saw recently: ---------------- Requirements: * Object Oriented PHP * Efficient in MySQL * Experience with programming logic, great code writing style * Understandin…

There's sometimes a huge mismatch between what the employer is asking, and his needs.

For example, at my current job we're asking for an expert in HTML5, JQuery, CSS2.1, CSS3, JavaScript, Ajax, Mobile Web Development, Mobile Web Performance, Cross-Browser, Cross-Platform Development; debugging tools (Firebug or equivalent), DOM, Internationalization, Localization, Apache.

The truth is, we have one of the ugliest websites, on an awful CMS, and our webpages are on ASP (not .NET, plain old ASP circa 1999) with VBScript hosted on IIS 5.

What such a rockstar web developer will be doing here beats me (the company does pay way above average wages locally, but such a developer can work for the US).

We've already wasted somebody who was a decent web programmer (he's doing mailing lists for the Marketing department), I guess that the selected applicant will end up doing ASP pages (maybe they'll let him migrate portions of the website very slowly).

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

#39

Post by nollidge »

s_henry_paulson wrote: post #8

I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument: Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Either that or a sign of an unwillingness to learn. Both of these are red flags when hiring. On the other hand, if your "zero tolerance" policy includes things like my usage of an oxford comma, chances are I don't want to work for you.

Right, that was one thing I thought of. Is he testing just for actual grammar rules like verb conjugation and such, or is he also including superficial style rules like "avoid the passive" or typographic things like how many spaces after a period?

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

#40

Post by benihana »

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 taught correctly!"

Sure, I get a little anxious when people misuse your/you're. But to think it's an early indicator of success is at best limiting yourself to missing out on talent, and at worse surrounding yourself with likeminded pedantic grammar nazis who care about unimportant things. In my time as a software developer, I've met a lot of people who got angsty about grammar who weren't very inspiring programmers. I've met more people who couldn't figure out their and there or you're and your to save their lives who were both fantastically good software engineers and effective communicators.

Lets keep a little perspective here: The goal of hiring isn't to find someone who's not going to annoy you by misusing grammar in emails. It's to find someone who's going to help you accomplish your goals. I get that details are important for your company. I just don't agree that knowing grammar rules indicates an attention to the proper details.

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