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

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

#311

Post by knewter » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 7:06 AM UTC

bguthrie wrote: post #200

kamaal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>In short, I don't see the problem. You don't see the problem because you look at it from a different direction. Hiring good programmers is already hard enough. And you are likely to hire a bad programmer despite having them run through many programming interview sessions. If you put all sorts of irrelevant criteria in between, you are likely to get people who have mastered the art of beating interviews by specializ…

I claim that the mathematics of hiring aren't all that different from the mathematics of beauty: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/ The OP generated a lot of strong negative reactions. But it also generated some strong positive reactions from programmers who share the author's frustrations and would enjoy working at a place where everyone punctuates impeccably. Like the author, my experience…

I'm an owner at a software dev shop now, and I loved this article. I can't imagine actually using grammar as a litmus test, personally, but it definitely goes into my on-the-spot judgement criteria. I feel significantly less-comfortable working with someone who lacks the critical thinking skills or personal professionalism to be intensely concerned with how they interact with others - and grammar is significantly about that.

If you can't be bothered to learn grammatical syntax, and it's something you've done your whole life, why should I expect that you'll be bothered to pursue perfection in other areas? If you are bothered to pursue it, why should I believe you have a chance at approaching it if you haven't nailed something you've done since you were five years old?

Anyway, I've not taken the time till now to really develop my understanding of this flash judgement I make of people, but it has always really bugged me. I have a friend who some people view as 'redneck' because he's got a bit of southern good-ol-boy in his heritage, but he's been reading books since he was young and it shows. We took a chance on him, brought him in-house, and trained him. One of the reasons I knew he'd become a great developer was because of the attention to detail he gave to everything that he did. It played out extremely well, for us and for him, and that one signal was a huge part of it.

Obviously anecdotal; typical caveats apply. Still, I'd rather live in the world iFixIt's pursuing than the world we presently live in, re: grammar.

EDIT: hilariously, for grammar. I missed a question mark.

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

#312

Post by jongraehl » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 7:10 AM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #123

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…

META: Karl that's a tremendously massive comment. Wonder if it might be more useful as an online FAQ that you could link to? I know I lost interest about 3 sentences in, but it looks like some great material in there. Just a thought.

I found it an easy read, and more useful and interesting than the rest of the comments on this article combined. You can link a HN comment, too.

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

#313

Post by queensnake » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 8:14 AM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #310

quotemstr wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

enh - so ask puzzle problems. Microsoft and Google have it covered. IMO.

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

#314

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 8:17 AM UTC

derleth wrote: post #292

TeMPOraL wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've read plenty of extremely thoughtful, info-dense specs in the open-source community that had typos and grammar errors. I've seen countless emails from colleagues that were clearly quickly written and thus contained errors. The essential ideas were none-the-less transmitted. And because people tolerate it and allow for this to happen, we live in such ugly world, where people don't give a damn about quality.

> where people don't give a damn about quality. Similarly, nobody has fine tapestries on the walls of their server rooms. Nobody cares about the insulation properties, apparently, but worst of all, nobody cares about the attention to detail and quality a fine tapestry represents. Thus we live in a terrible world with no appreciation of the finer things, because if you don't mind the lack of tapestries, how can you po…

Getting basic grammar poorly is not like having no tapestries on walls of server rooms. It's like having a big mess in server room, where machines lie around in unorderly fashion and cabling is a mess. Yes, it works. But it looks terrible. Also add unfinished pizzas laying on the floor for accurate representation of people who don't care about spelling.

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

#315

Post by halefx » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 8:29 AM UTC

excuse-me wrote: post #193

stan_rogers wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be hanged , actually, when referring to capital punishment, except when drawing and quartering are involved. It's a quirk of the language; hung is correct in most circumstances.

Yes we know, that's what made the comment funny - now you've spoiled the joke.

Is now a good time to point out that "poor" would be more appropriate than "bad" and that it should be reworded not to use "with"?

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

#316

Post by queensnake » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 8:36 AM UTC

sebnukem2 wrote: post #140

adv0r wrote: post #24

What it they are foreigners?

As a foreigner, I can try to answer that. I've noticed that in general foreigners have a much better grammar than English native speakers because we (at least in my case) went through boring English classes. Learning English was a conscious effort and every grammar rule had to be learned and understood. Reading English also requires a conscious effort, and reading poorly written English requires an even greater effor…

> I've noticed that in general foreigners have a much better grammar than English native speakers

I have to disagree strongly - not my experience at all, with Indians, Chinese, Germans, Spaniards, Belorussians.. One exception, a Greek who could kick my verbal ass. But, of course, native speakers have the huge advantage of proper use being just intuitive but, still, you made an absolute statement.

You may be interested to know that when a conquered people adopts the conquerors' language, they take on the vocabulary but much of the grammar of the old language remains. I read an interesting paper about some grammatical trick you could do in Germanic languages, but not in English. Why? Maybe because, in this way, Celtic was shining through? No, non-British-aisles Celtic has the same trick. The paper speculated that it was a remnant of the grammar of pre-Celtic, pre-historic Briton. (Just to illustrate how hard it is to adopt a new grammar.)

Also, note, general foreigner, it's 'much better grammar' not '/a/ much better grammar'.

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

#317

Post by cafard » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 12:44 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #156

Ah! The Irony. These days programmers don't want to be bothered about the language syntax they use and heavily depend of autocomplete and intellisense to do even simple tasks. While its this grammar that they should be actually learning and mastering. Yet this isn't even the criteria for hiring programmers these days. And by the way where does this stop. I can argue physical fitness is important for programmer so can…

If you can find someone who can sprint 1000 meters, you have a real beast on your hands.

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

#318

Post by antidoh » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 2:39 PM UTC

"And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're."

I used to make that judgment. I've since been humbled by many brilliant people who commit that and other common errors. I would be poorer, possibly impoverished, if I had dismissed those people from my circle.

As Peopleware pointed out many years ago, most people have something important to contribute, even if they don't contribute much in one specific area.

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

#319

Post by michaelcampbell » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 2:48 PM UTC

nirvdrum wrote: post #85

irahul wrote: post #17

My train of thoughts: > Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Whoa. Who do you think you are - google? What makes you think I am going to sit through your grammar test? If I am agreeing to your grammar test, either you are one of the most desirable places to work for(never heard of you), or economy is about to collapse and this is the only job…

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…

> 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 know the difference, and when I make a mistake I've found that every time it's been a mistake of my "finger muscle memory" when typing it rather than using the wrong word. In other words, I used the correct word, but I typed it incorrectly.

That is impossible to detect on any test where the answer is typed. Perhaps a followup to these sorts of tests are, "Here are all the places you used `its` and `it's`. Do you think they are all correct, and if not, which would you change?"

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

#320

Post by nirvdrum » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 3:53 PM UTC

nessus42 wrote: post #305

nirvdrum wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've mentioned this elsewhere in the comments, but you're extremely unlikely to ever see a non-native speaker write "greater then" rather than "greater than." It's a pseudo-homophone (they really are pronounced differently) that just doesn't exist to anyone picking up English as another language. More than that, it's confusing as hell for them to read because it's a form that makes no sense. "would of" and "would've" is another that comes to mind. Mixing "lose" and "loose" up seems fairly common nowadays, too.

You're right in that those not fluent in English make mistakes that seem odd, but I don't think I've ever come across a case where the error wasn't with a different tense or form of the verb. I.e., the sentence is structured a bit oddly, but it largely makes sense. The same cannot be said of "would of."