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

• josephmosby 6y ago
  Eng manager at a team that was remote pre-pandemic and I will 100% confirm this is critical to getting things done. I'll add on that it is tough to find someone who is a great writer and a great engineer early on in their careers. You just haven't had a lot of time to practice both. When you're looking for junior candidates, they will often fall into two camps: they'll write too much, or they'll write too little. If you're the candidate: err on the side of writing too much. If you're the manager: writing too much is considerably easier to fix than writing too little.
  • Pasorrijer 6y ago
    For a junior candidate, which do you think is easier to train? The engineering skills, or the writing skills? At first glance, I think writing... But as I think more I personally think the writing / communication skills are more challenging to teach, especially to engineers because it is more of an "art" than a fixed talent.
    • suchire 6y ago
      I find they can sort of be taught in similar ways, as there are a lot of things about good, clear coding that translate to/from clear writing. At the risk of self-promoting, I wrote a comparison here a long time ago: https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2016/01/writing-code.html https://www.ericsuh.com/blog/posts/2016/01/writing-code.html
    • cbanek 6y ago
      Also been a hiring manager but not OP. I would honestly say they are more related than you think. If you can't fit a narrative to your architecture or what you're doing, it will be hard to understand. It's important to know the "story" of what you are building: where is the data going? Who is the user? If you come up with an architecture that is complicated, just keep working on it and editing, like writing, to make it make more sense. You need good editors / code reviewers on both sides, and they will make you a better reader and writer. If you struggle with writing skills (not all people are good at some particular language) I find being able to make a good picture is even more essential. I think one of the things to state is that it's not about writing something that sounds important. It's about writing something that people can understand. Don't get too stuck in the "art" part of it. At least for me, simplicity is beauty. Another way to try this is to sit down with someone and say "explain what this does" and then see what they come up with. Some people are really good at talking, but not writing. But being able to explain is almost as good, and sometimes more necessary than writing.
      • killjoywashere 6y ago
        I hired two folks locally, then moved to an island thousands of miles away, then hired an ML and data science team of 3 more folks. My team also has to work in a mixed group where a few folks were hired by another, very senior manager. He knows how to hire. The guy is a legend. Those hires I made from far away were much more carefully thought out and turned out to be much stronger. Equivalent to the ones the senior guy was hiring, if not stronger. I think it's because I couldn't delude myself into thinking "They're fine, I don't need to waste time interviewing. I can just groom them, get them to where they need to be." I had to, absolutely, consider these people as full time remote workers, several time zones away. They had to be crack engineers and crack communicators. And I had to enforce those standards from the get go. Watching everyone else go through the shift to remote work was fascinating. The pandemic caused us to change nothing.
    • CGamesPlay 6y ago
      GP's post is written with an implicit assumption that the junior candidate's engineering skills are "good enough", so that should absolutely be the focus. But I agree that writing is probably easier to train.
    • ZephyrBlu 6y ago
      Considering the number of people who have good engineering skills vs good writing skills (I think very few people are good at writing), I think writing is more difficult. Most people are not used to paring their writing down and getting rid of the fluff while also being articulate.
    • rmk 6y ago
      It depends. A person who doesn’t want to learn doesn’t pick up either, in my experience. On the other hand, having a style guide helps in coding, and it helps everyone express ideas using a uniform style and idiom, which enables a lot of implicit communication via the code itself. Training people would entail pointing to the style guide. A big caveat is that you need a team or larger organization where this has already been set up, and that the hires need to be the kind of people who can take direction. It will fail miserably if even one of the above is untrue.
    • ashtonkem 6y ago
      Engineering, no question. The number of people I've met that can code like the blazes but can neither clearly communicate their ideas nor persuade people with the written word is kind of astounding. Many of them can be persuasive in person by relying on their passion and high rate of speech to carry them through, a strategy which does not work at all for the written word. Engineering has the clear benefit of things either working or not, with the reasons why it failed being entirely explainable even if it's not obvious at the time. Documentation is fundamentally a human to human operation, which means that all of the signals are messy and unclear. Writing is harder than speaking too, because you can't adjust course mid-stream if it's clear that your reader is confused or unmoved. Writing demands that you not only get your thoughts organized effectively, but that you reliably predict how people will read it and compensate appropriately. This is not a skill trivially learned.
    • josephmosby 6y ago
      They are both easy to train if you have trainers who are thinking about it as craft. That being said, if you are working in the technology field, you are more likely to work with individuals who actively learned engineering but passively learned writing. Alternative example: early on in my career, I was a software developer for a PR agency and then a news organization after that. At these organizations, solid writing and editing is drilled just as much as good code review or test coverage is taught in engineering organizations. Their lunch-and-learn sessions aren't about new JavaScript frameworks; they analyze how a particular piece of text was created and find ways to improve it. My single largest "level-up" in this domain was when I started reading more on character creation in fiction. It forced me to think about how I'm telling stories, which then meant I had to think about how I constructed paragraphs, which then... you get the idea. Some great books I read: - Robert McKee's "Story," which analyzes how great screenwriting is constructed. You will view action movies in a totally different way after this. - Corbett's "The Art of Character," which focuses on how characters are created - Roman/Raphaelson's business writing book, which was recommended by PR legend David Ogilvy - the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff manuals (https://www.jcs.mil/Library/CJCS-Manuals/ https://www.jcs.mil/Library/CJCS-Manuals/). These are rigidly structured texts with strange language that forced me to consider writing for a different audience than I normally would (military officers versus tech engineers)
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    The longer I work in tech, the less silly it seems to have "English minor" on my resume.
    • twicetwice 6y ago
      These comments are making me feel a lot better about having "Philosophy major" on my resume.
      • vertis 6y ago
        No that was a waste ^_^ One of the things that was becoming a big thing when I left my last big company employer, was non-standard backgrounds. When you're looking for diversity a product manager or developer that has had a previous job as a lawyer (or whatever) can be a really useful asset. They see things a little bit different from their team. Call out risks that wouldn't otherwise have been addressed.
      • titanomachy 6y ago
        The founder of Slack was a philosophy major, you're in good company.
• jariel 6y ago
  It's not really about 'writing skills', it's 'communication skills'. 'Writing' usually implies the ability to be creatively articulate, for example, like writing a long form news article. People can be great writers and poor communicators. For coherent team communications you even don't need proper grammar - what you need the ability to be clear, succinct, appropriate, provide context, timely etc.. It's not about 'writing' so much as it is 'social' and 'structured' communicating. People with strong sensibility for others in a social context will know what needs to be said and not. For example, some people, when reading something ambiguous in an e-mail, will take it the wrong way. Some will not. Some will know when not to write something and when to. Again, this is not a 'writing skill' per sey more like communication.
  • k__ 6y ago
    "you need the ability to be clear, succinct, appropriate, timely etc.." These are the basics of technical writing. But to be fair, technical writers are also called technical communicators.
    • jariel 6y ago
      That's true - but the article is not about technical writing, nor is technical writing the key to smooth communication for remote workers. (Obviously it might help though.) Many great writers are far too verbose and indirect to be great examples of how to succinctly communicate. Again, the term 'writing' is totally misapplied. Most people have sufficient writing skills, the issue is content which is where most of us are lacking.
  • a-dub 6y ago
    100% this. grammar, punctuation and all the like are nice to haves. (and can be good social signaling) but the real skill is the ability to communicate complex ideas completely in a way that is easy for others to understand.
  • theshrike79 6y ago
    I hate long form writing with a passion. I barely got my decree because I hated writing that trite crap they call a thesis so much. On the other hand I consider myself a good communicator, I can type a succinct email with a clear structure, I can create a damn fine Wiki page with indexes and all and I also communicate pretty well over text-based chats (started with IRC in the 90's). Still, I couldn't write a 10 page report to save my life (still have one due for a course, been putting it off for 6 months now...)
• keithnz 6y ago
  This isn't my experience, I find that people who are quick to initiate communication do really well. Doesn't matter too much about the writing (maybe some people are much worse than us at writing) as we simply voice chat if things weren't clear
  • SkyPuncher 6y ago
    This is how it is at my company (100% remote). Having Zoom on stand-by is key for us. Anytime things get complicated, we just hop on a Zoom call. All of us can communicated well in writing, but I don't know of anyone on my team who prefers it. For me, in particular, I'm an incredibly slow writer, so it's just painful to write too much.
    • ketzo 6y ago
      It’s big where I work, too - I’m very into the little slack (there might be a teams one?) plug-in, where you can just message people “/zoom” and it instantly makes a meeting with whoever’s in the chat. It makes little 5-minute meetings for debugging or clarification super painless, which means we do more of them, which is huge for the team being on the same page.
      • names_are_hard 6y ago
        I doubt there's an equivalent Teams plugin because the standard solution for that problem in Teams is to click the little telephone icon inside the chat and you're on a call. Add or subtract video and screen sharing as desired. Continue to paste things (documents, links, whatever) inside the call's chat and it's recorded along with the chat/call. I have a lot of complaints about Teams, but there's something to be said for an integrated solution.
        • ketzo 6y ago
          Oh, interesting, that sounds pretty cool. I haven’t used Teams, but it does seem like the big sell is how insanely tied into everything else Microsoft it is.
• adamnemecek 6y ago
  To be honest, this fetishization of writing is very Anglo-centric. I don't think that people say this for example in Germany.
  • daenz 6y ago
    This is a strange comment. >this fetishization What part of Mr Tien's post implies that he fetishizes writing? I read it twice, the logic behind prioritizing writing skills in a remote-first world is reasonable. Why is it suddenly a fetish? >I don't think that people say this for example in Germany. What experience are you drawing this statement from? Are you saying people in Germany don't prioritize good writing skills wrt remote candidates?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • adamnemecek 6y ago
      The part where he says that writing matters for remote work. Like these types of articles tend to pop up in different contexts but it's always vague. I'm drawing on the experience that people in Germany don't talk about the importance of writing as much.
      • spirobel 6y ago
        Can you speak German? I mean seriously, talk to any German boomer and he will tell you about correct orthography. Its his favorite topic.
        • adamnemecek 6y ago
          Yeah I can. Orthography is different from writing.
          • spirobel 6y ago
            Es ist Teil davon. Dein Kommentar ist einfach Unfug.
• binarycodedhex 6y ago
  Documentation is all well and good, but also having people who can solve domain problems rather than just describe them ought to be a priority among many to have a mix in the organization. Less capable people can document what someone more skilled solved if they're not great communicators (I knew several people exactly like this). Having all documenters doesn't necessarily allow tackling hard problems but could risk reducing the bar to who can communicate in-lieu of doing hard things. There is a finite supply of hard problem solvers and even fewer far who can communicate well. It may or may not be cheaper to hire one who can't communicate and a technical writer or junior staffer rather than an all-in-one unicorn who can do everything.
• Pokepokalypse 6y ago
  Yeah. And I'm having a ton of problems with co-workers who have shitty writing skills; where, pre-covid, they weren't that bad. I could always walk over and get a clarification when I needed. But jeez, come on guys, the same people who get their panties in a bunch over an extra space in my yaml, or "too many comments" - don't bother to slack complete sentences.
• hodgesrm 6y ago
  I've been working on remote teams for almost 20 years. The key to success is overcommunicating. In other words--don't assume people have full context or share assumptions. Write emails that lay out assumptions explicitly and detail problems completely. As a manager I sometimes feel like a Habsburg bureaucrat buried in the Chancery offices sending painstaking messages to a far flung empire. Come to think of it, remote work is not that different.
  • karlhughes 6y ago
    The other thing working remote forces me to do is to actually think before I assign a task to someone or ask a question. It's a lot easier to casually interrupt someone with half a thought than to write a poorly thought out email.
    • ketzo 6y ago
      Wow, that’s pretty interesting. In real life, I might blurt out a comment or question, but when I find myself doing the same even with a long slack message — by the time I write two or three sentences, and maybe go back to reword something, I’ve already started thinking about how I can solve the problem myself, and I cancel the message.
    • trhway 6y ago
      That is also the main advantage of email over IM. Email kind of forces some effect of the remoteness you described even when everyone is in the same office.
      • mrslave 6y ago
        On the other hand, in a colocated workspace it is infuriating when a high effort, carefully crafted email is met by recipients interrupting you at your desk with, "Hey, about that email, can you just quickly run through it with me now please?"
        • ashtonkem 6y ago
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  I find this trope quite boring; you know who is good, people who can code, people with high IQs and people with the right experience. Being able to write is probably about the same as people who can design as well as code. Sure it’ll be useful but hiring experts in these areas should be your ultimate goal. No startup was killed ever by a bad prose style. So after reading the article (ha imagine) it is are NOT about writing ability, they talk about the company prioritising documentation and communication. Documentation, sure, but communication is another truism I don’t have much time for; we’ve all worked with extremely productive clever programmers who don’t communicate well, if you’re a founder getting the best from each persons character might be better than just hiring only extroverts.
  • anonytrary 6y ago
    > No startup was killed ever by a bad prose style. With the uptick in startups trying to be passive-aggressive, witty, and provocative in their social media posts, I would disagree. Your product doesn't have to be edgy. If it is, it tells me that your product probably has no merit in and of itself.
• wonder_er 6y ago
  > To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills I strongly agree! Looks like many other commenters agree too. how do I find companies that are hiring and agree with this statement? I've had a hard time finding those companies. I've had a slew of interviews recently, and none of them asked about my extensive online writing. None of them seemed to have clicked through to my website. Are any of you on teams that really celebrate good writing, and would weigh my blog [0] at least as much as a technical challenge? [0] https://josh.works/blog https://josh.works/blog
  • notyourwork 6y ago
    Amazon celebrates good writing.
  • blizkreeg 6y ago
    Stripe
    • wonder_er 6y ago
      I interviewed with them, after very affirming conversations with a few different people in the organization. My writing/async communication skills didn't come up. _They did not ask_, which means my writing skills are illegible to the organization. I bombed the "live algorithmic coding challenge", which is a re-implementation of the Trier Social Stress Test, and indeed induced substantial anxiety on my behalf, _because I so wanted to work at Stripe_. [0] I was so dispirited I've not done another technical interview since. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trier_social_stress_test https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trier_social_stress_test
  • ayewo 6y ago
    Off-topic: I like the look of your blog. Is your theme a heavily customized instance of Jekyll?
    • wonder_er 6y ago
      Thanks ayewo! It is indeed Jekyll. The Poole theme. I've written a little about how to set up something similar here: https://josh.works/build-a-personal-site-with-jekyll https://josh.works/build-a-personal-site-with-jekyll It's not super customized, but I've done a lot of work over the years to just make it work well for me. Jekyll is a super cool tool.
• stevofolife 6y ago
  On this note, can someone suggest good practical resources to learn how to improve writing skills?
  • notalexma 6y ago
    William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" is a good starting point.
  • fsnowdin 6y ago
    I've had good experience with Steven Pinker's book The Sense of Style. Also journaling every day helps immensely.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• dartdartdart 6y ago
  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.
  • bathtub365 6y ago
    I don’t think it skews towards English speakers in particular: it actually skews towards strong communicators in the preferred communication language of the team. A great engineer who can’t communicate effectively with the team due to a language barrier isn’t a very useful team member. It’s tempting to think that technical ability should be the sole measure of someone’s worth as a engineer but that simply not true outside of working in a vacuum.
    • ergocoder 6y ago
      But English skill is a major component of being a strong communicator in English. Native English speakers who practice speaking English every minute of their lives would be at a huge advantage.
      • seventhtiger 6y ago
        Not necessarily. English as a second language speakers who may have a accent or take longer to formulate their responses are at a disadvantage in person. I've met many who have expansive vocabularies and impeccable grammar, and I am one myself, but it's hard for us to get over the first impression of the accent and to formulate our responses with natural timing. For us writing sets a level playing field.
    • username90 6y ago
      > 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.
• sandGorgon 6y ago
  How do you interview for developers with strong writing skills? Do you give a writing assignment, etc
  • sjy 6y ago
    I’ve submitted job applications that asked me to include a writing sample, and have also asked job applicants to edit a page of bad writing riddled with errors, for positions where writing or editing skills were important.
    • sandGorgon 6y ago
      but we are talking about developers here. is it socially acceptable to give writing interviews here ?
• ehvatum 6y ago
  “If you’re a strong writer and you can consume information in written formats really well, you’ll probably have an easier time transitioning to a remote team than someone who prefers face-to-face communication.” Inspiring young employees to read and become more articulate is something the best managers and organizations do. Few people enter the workforce being ultra-literate. Who writes love letters, anymore? Who bothers to inspire, or to be inspired? A scarce currency is only more precious.
• envolt 6y ago
  I joined a new company recently (during pandemic; July). The onboarding was not so smooth. I was constantly following up here and there to get things done (e.g access to tools with IT), more importantly to get to the part with whom do I need to follow up and how to follow up; figuring this out was another follow up. I created an onboarding guide last week (for my team) which was a very small thing for me (created a document on confluence in an hour). But the amount of response I got was overwhelming (IMO bit too much compared to how i expected to be yet-another-document).
  • folkhack 6y ago
    I've been the "over the moon" guy when someone comes aboard who wants to improve stuff. Sometimes when you're in the trenches competent help arriving can be a godsend. Not saying this is your situation, but people may just be excited.
    • nullsense 6y ago
      >Sometimes when you're in the trenches competent help arriving can be a godsend. So much this.
  • rmk 6y ago
    Sadly this sort of thing rarely matters when performance review time comes. I have never received any significant benefit career wise or money wise from doing this, despite this kind of stuff making a huge difference for the new joinee.
    • mod 6y ago
      That's okay, I think. Not like it's a harder job than you'd otherwise be spending your time on.
    • noisy_boy 6y ago
      Sometimes its just about the mindshare. The HR person chatting with the VP: "You know that new girl, what's her name, yeah Julie, she setup a nice onboarding guide, yeah I liked it, very useful..."; casual stuff like that adds the layers of impressions that construct how everyone sees you. And I have observed those impressions to be more lasting and impactful than your last code review.
• jandrewrogers 6y ago
  Note, this is also true for great non-remote employees. Highly developed writing skills are a superpower everywhere.
  • dang 6y ago
    Yes, and it's arguably why we're all here. HN and YC developed out of pg's writing. There are other examples too. StackOverflow comes to mind.
• neom 6y ago
  I emailed Ian Tien to ask him, given the emphasis on written communication, if his company does anything to support dyslexic employees.
  • dvtrn 6y ago
    Any response yet?
    • neom 6y ago
      Sadly not. I will post a comment below if I get one.
      • dvtrn 6y ago
        I’m appreciative that at least one other commenter had this thought in mind.
• VectorLock 6y ago
  I'm really interested in finding resources to help my team members develop their writings skills. Tech skills are comparatively easy to find materials for, I think. At this point I think writing skills are so important it's the biggest priority for further their careers, given the level of technology experience they have.
  • dehrmann 6y ago
    > Tech skills are comparatively easy to find materials for, I think. Sorta, but most of the tech skills that are easy to find information on are closer to grammar and punctuation than to writing. Just like software development, the way you train people to write is have people write and, importantly, have people review and edit it.
    • VectorLock 6y ago
      While I agree that while application is a great way to learn most of the time when you go to school they don't just tell you "just keep doing a thing over and over" without any other kind of guidance or material.
• mqrs 6y ago
  Since we’re at the topic of eloquence, might I add that horribly-written codebases are unbearable to work with during this time, or perhaps even during regular times for as long as the set up is remote. I get it that codebases inevitably rot over time, but the amount of rot can be mitigated by good dev practices such as unit testing, code reviews, best-effort (not perfect!) documentation, and standardizing dev practices. Dev teams that simply don’t care about code maintenance practices because the code “works” won’t be able to move fast enough during regular times, much less during a pandemic remote-setup scenario.
  • brailsafe 6y ago
    Yes, but things change over time, and there is rarely a chance to go back and refactor. Every time you introduce something new, or make some tech decision, it should be able to exist without needing to be re-written for a long time. If you are lucky enough to have some budget available for refactoring, it will probably be incremental, so choose choose things that can be adopted incrementally.
    • mqrs 6y ago
      > there is rarely a chance to go back and refactor I wouldn’t say that this has been true in my experience. I’ve worked on multiple products that evolve over time and it often happens that a new feature touches on previously built features that can’t support all the behaviors of the new one, so then a refactor of the old code (at least some of it) is necessary. You can argue that doing so would require regression tests, but that’s why you automate those with a unit testing framework. This mindset of never modifying previously written code within reasonable and pragmatic boundaries is so rigid and anti-growth, I don’t even know how it came to be so popular within an industry that identifies so closely with innovation. That’s how you end up with putting band-aid solutions on top of each other and slowing down the agility of your teams over time.
• sanketskasar 6y ago
  Any guidance for developing these skills, especially in the context of tech companies?
  • kevsim 6y ago
    As with all things - practice and find someone who can give you honest, constructive feedback.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• soneca 6y ago
  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 offer. The message is that I believe strong writing skills won’t help you get a job. It will help you a lot once you start the job, but I don’t believe it helps at all at being hired. Things that I do believe help you get hired: a well-written CV, a CS degree, a top-branded college, a top-branded former employer, a good public sample of your code (open source, side-project, etc), interview skills (be calm, articulate, charming, clear explanations and thought process), practice at technical interviews of the specific type of the positions you are applying to. My advice is to practice your writing skills after you get a job, not before. [0] https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com https://writingfordevelopers.substack.com
  • gingerlime 6y ago
    I think you missed one thing -- in my opinion the most crucial: cover letter. I wrote about it on https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/who-doesnt-want-to-be-hired/ https://blog.gingerlime.com/2020/who-doesnt-want-to-be-hired...
    • soneca 6y ago
      I am on the fence on cover letters. I am pretty sure they are not the most crucial part though. I did write cover letters for most of my applications, a relevant part of them following all the good advice for cover letters, some just copy and paste. I couldn’t see correlation in my application of well-thought cover letters and interviews. My copy-paste one was very well written and representative of my skills. Good enough for most companies I think. In the end I got a job from a copy-paste one. The most a good customized cover letter did to me were customized rejections praising my cover letter/email.
      • MattGaiser 6y ago
• Nevaeh 6y ago
  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 a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don't want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action - I have given enough warning over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be not "HTS" [horizontal test stand] or "VTS" [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A "stand" at our test site is obviously a test stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with "Tripod", which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, e.g. MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum.
  • abdusco 6y ago
    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.
    • benhurmarcel 6y ago
• monkin 6y ago
  So Basecamp wrote it years ago and now every company will make its own pice of PR-come-to-work-with-us crap out of this? You don’t have any personal thought on top of that?
  • nenadpantelic 6y ago
    My thoughts exactly.
• ParzivalML 6y ago
  I hope that after corona epidemic is over, remote work will blosom.
• aaron695 6y ago
  > To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong writing skills This makes some sense. "Strong writing skills" is not a skill IT people are good at. Pre C19 I argued to stop putting this in job ads since no one could come up with examples where it mattered. For our best workers they didn't have it, we were just cargo culting the job ads. Is this post-coronavirus remote working excitement just the dopamine hit of thinking what skipping a commute is like or a well thought out plan around long term job prospects and long term mental health?
• Brajeshwar 6y ago
  Good writing is a business and career advantage. Try to be clear, concise, and get to the point real quick. Here are some of my learnings and anecdotal incidents I have experienced so far. Still learning and recalibrating as I go on. Try following BLUF[1], a military communications acronym — “Bottom Line Up Front” — designed to enforce speed and clarity in reports and emails. We, especially in the eastern culture, tend to weave stories and try to form a connection before hitting the point. When it comes to team communication, either in emails and other forms of communication, it is better to reverse it -- start with the important points and then, if needed, weave the stories to make it clearer and empathetic. However, just knowing the tips/tricks isn't enough, communication (more aptly writing) is a habit that becomes better with more practice. One common suggestion I advise my team is, "I cannot read your mind, you have to tell me. The same goes with the client/customer -- ask them, talk to them unless you can read their mind." If you work for a Startup or any Company for that matter, how do you think the founder or the C-Suites know what you did. Make it a habit to write weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly reports and email them. I guarantee you that it will come to pay you with compound interest in the future. Here is a scenario. You just joined a new company. You report to a few at the top and work with a few under you. You have to gain the trust of those below you and prove to the ones above. If you are someone who wants to "prove it", do beyond your call, and wants to go the extra mile, what would be an ideal step besides the usual work you have to do. Try this (I think I read this on Seth Godin's Blog[2]). Write a regular report of the accomplishment of your team, and highlight the people under you -- include their names and what they did that help you, and the team. The tops know what's happening and can take decisions without having to read your mind or setting up "meetings" and "catch-ups" which most will forget as soon as they are over. When in writing, they will likely mark it and act on it appropriately. For those Individual Contributors (IC), I would still suggest doing something similar. Others, including your managers, friends, colleagues cannot read your mind. You might be one of the best programmers and you can prove it with code but imagine supplementing that with some form of communication on your gotchas, tips, tricks -- people love to hear those. I was once in a team, big enough, and we had just one DevOps. He was rather silent, talks to very few people, the corner guy. But I was intrigued by the short and clear emails he sent when things are going to go down, backup, etc. while maintaining everyone's DevOps needs without much sweat (or is it). I began talking to him often and he was friendly, eager to tell me interesting things. He was also a regular documenter and writes some of the best documentation of what he did, why he did and was pretty much future proof. Almost none knew about that but he continues the routine. That documentation soon became a way to onboard new recruits when a new account was started for DevOps for enterprise customers earning $100Ks in the first few months of operation. By the time he left or close to it, that department was pulling in close to millions. If you are in the lower rung and believe no one listens to you, despite you being smart -- think again. You have writing as your weapon. One of my career advice is, “Imagine yourself already advanced in your careers a year or more, then start acting and doing the roles you would do by then.“ If you are asked why you do something better because that is above your pay grade, you are in the wrong company. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication) 2. https://www.sethgodin.com https://www.sethgodin.com
• thesz 6y ago
  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 https://twitter.com/CodeWisdom/status/1318597850411008006
  • capableweb 6y ago
    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.
    • Leherenn 6y ago
      It's especially surprising given Dijkstra wasn't a native English speaker.
    • Fnoord 6y ago
      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.
      • capableweb 6y ago
        > able to learn a lot of important basics at a very young age Ok, and why is that important? Could be a ton of reasons why people are lagging behind when they are younger but be able to catch up when they are adults. Judging people based on how you think they might have been when they were younger feels... Not fair. Judge them based on their current knowledge and person instead. > inability to master the native tongue shows a lack of education I think you're reading too much into it. Education has nothing to do with native tongue. People forget language. I myself speak my native tongue a lot worse now when I lived outside the country I was born in a couple of years. Does this mean I lack education? No! I do lack any education, but that's not the reason my native tongue is getting worse every passing year.
• leghifla 6y ago
  > If you’re a strong writer and you can consume information in written formats really well Most comments here are focused on the "write well" part, which is important, no doubt. But let's not forget the "read well" part. When people cannot read more than a paragraph without losing focus, or are confused by the used of precise technical terms (like stacks and queues, lists and sets...), the idea that you want to communicate will at best not pass, at worst been reshaped to something else.
• snird 6y ago
  Absolutely agree. The emphasis on writing skills is a repeating theme here, too. A few months ago I wrote a similar thing that got >800 votes here on HN: https://snir.dev/blog/remote-async-communication https://snir.dev/blog/remote-async-communication
• anonytrary 6y ago
  Weak writing skills = lower information throughput = worse at remote work. Obvious or not? Sorry nevermind, this was a misleading title. The article is actually about writing more documentation to decrease onboarding time. I think this is also true for non-remote onboarding. Better title would be "Writing great documentation decreases onboarding time for remote employees". Not really sure why this has > 300 votes. I guess people read the title and agreed.
• OJFord 6y ago
  It's not an issue for me, but how does this gel with discrimination laws? If the reason a candidate is a worse communicator is a protected characteristic, you can't (legally) reject them on that basis. (Not that I necessarily think that's net good, but it is the case.) I'm not so clear on where you stand if you just see poor communication and really honestly have no idea of the reason for it, they don't say and it doesn't give itself away.
  • dredmorbius 6y ago
    Literacy skill is not a protected class. You can reject candidates for performance-related reasons. You cannot reject a candidate for status within a protected class. Structured patterns suggesting protected-class discrimination may raise issues, though typically require convincing evidence. Offsetting considerations (say, recruiting or mentoring programmes) might be considered mitigating.
    • dvtrn 6y ago
      Literacy skill is not a protected class. Literacy skill itself is not, but be VERY careful with that. Learning disabilities are still disabilities, and those 100% are protected. https://www.understood.org/en/community-events/blogs/in-the-news/2015/06/26/settlement-in-dyslexia-discrimination-case-shows-the-system-at-work https://www.understood.org/en/community-events/blogs/in-the-...
      • dredmorbius 6y ago
        Interesting casse. Not precedent-setting as I read it.
        • dvtrn 6y ago
          The EEOC does not establish precedent, it is a federal agency, not a court, so correct-it is not "prcedent" setting. But it is still relevant and worth caution, care and consideration when assessing potential hires based on 'literacy'. Non-Compliance is costly. And with that, I conclude my alliterative TED Talk on best practices and compliance in hiring.
• unnouinceput 6y ago
  Quote: "To learn more about what it’s like to work at Mattermost and to see our current open roles, check out our Careers page." So I went to check that, see what they have. And puff, Firefox informed me it has stopped a tracker on that page. To paraphrase: "Nice tracker you have there Mattermost, would be a shame is somebody would point it out"
• tomekowal 6y ago
  My two cents: 1. English is not my first language, and Grammarly helps a lot. Small things like correct punctuation and articles make the text much easier to read for native speakers. 2. I try to make communication "modular". There is tension between over-communicating (giving full context) and under-communicating (leaving out details). The first sentence of each paragraph summarizes the point. If you know that stuff already, you can skip. If you are re-reading, you can quickly get up to speed by skimming first sentences. If you are surprised by the first sentence, read the paragraph. 3. I often use numbers so that my recipient can answer or discuss just one point from my text. That usually starts with "Ad2". You can then "split" the discussion by numbering annotations "Ad2.1". If the conversation gets too long and convoluted, we need to add a summary of what we've written. Both Slack and email have flat conversation structure (Slack threads can go one level deep). That flat structure is usually a good thing for someone following the discussion. It is very natural, and most people reply in the same way instinctively.
  • el_don_almighty 6y ago
    1. Writing is FOR THE READER and your effort reflects this point. 2. This style is very effective across non-native languages and helps facilitate future communications by organizing back-and-forth discussions with topic numbers 3. Focused topics provide transition space in the reader's mind for internal language translation and context framing for improved comprehension. Each topic sits in its own compartment of the Bento Box for consumption and consideration
• piokoch 6y ago
  As far as writing is concerned my moment of enlightenment came when I read "Nobody wants to read your sh*t". The book is not about any particular "effective writing" skills, etc. it is about writing in such a way that someone will actually read what was written. The author applied that to copy-writing (he was working in the ads business), but this applies so well to everyday emails exchange or writing documentation. Making someone to read and comprahend something is not an easy task since a lot of people are getting used to (or maybe already got used to) communication using 200 chars tweets or a memes.
• Aissen 6y ago
  Also: hire people with strong reading skills. No matter how good your writing or your automation (requiring less writing), sometimes the business processes need long explanations. You don't want people asking around without reading the basics first. Overcommunicate, yes. But also, read what others actually wrote.
• theshrike79 6y ago
  I don't agree with everything DHH does or says, but the Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication is amazing: https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate https://basecamp.com/guides/how-we-communicate This is especially important now that people are working remotely and can't just quickly chat about things. A few quotes: #2 Real-time sometimes, asynchronous most of the time. #3 Internal communication based on long-form writing, rather than a verbal tradition of meetings, speaking, and chatting, leads to a welcomed reduction in meetings, video conferences, calls, or other real-time opportunities to interrupt and be interrupted. #16 "Now" is often the wrong time to say what just popped into your head. It's better to let it filter it through the sieve of time. What's left is the part worth saying.
• supernova87a 6y ago
  I find that it isn't just the act of communication or writing that's important -- it's the person's ability to step outside their own bubble of code, jargon, details, and synthesize (whether up or down) to give someone else the essence of what they need to know about an issue or problem in that communication or writing. To be able to offer some decision, plan some work, take some conclusion from what has been done so far. I encounter too many developers who simply start talking about the detailed issue at hand as if I've been working on it sitting aside them for the last week. Well, if that were the case, I would not need to talk to you about it. When talking to someone not directly involved in your work, the point is that some level of abstraction is needed, and probably some decision is the reason for talking. People need synthesis and summary of the issues at hand, and not recitation at the details level. This takes extra work and preparation, or at least mental organization -- to summarize for someone else what they need to take away from your details. It takes active effort to think about what your work or result or roadblock means for others, present options on what they should do, and you can tell easily when someone has thought through that next step, rather than just regurgitating what they've been working on all week. That is a highly valuable skill and you know it when you encounter it.
• fefe23 6y ago
  I recommend hiring at least one person who actually knows how to get the job done. I also recommend making sure you don't interrupt them with senseless meetings, spam them with a doom scrolling e-mail stream, or force them to be in useless chat rooms that keep interrupting their train of thought.
  • AQXt 6y ago
    > I recommend hiring at least one person who actually knows how to get the job done. I totally agree. Having "strong writing skills" is a plus -- but it is way less important than being qualified to the job.
    • drcoopster 6y ago
      Strong writing skills are part of being qualified for any remote job.
• jzer0cool 6y ago
  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.
  • AQXt 6y ago
    > Some signs that the candidate is good in communicating: > 1. They number each point. This helps person replying to address each point separately. I disagree. For me the most important sign is that: * They use bullets instead of numbers. Other than that, I fully agree.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• AQXt 6y ago
  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.)
  • drran 6y ago
    Also, hire telepaths to know when the job is done.
• chdaniel 6y ago
  Might look like self-promotion but a tool* I've developed is meant to help (read: force) people into writing in a better way: You write your full idea, then you create a new 'layer', and have to cut down on words. Basically distilling what you're trying to say. In the end you'll end up with the 'shortest' layer of the message. I built it partly with the aim of helping remote workers 'learn' how to write better * https://bychgroup.com/layered-ink https://bychgroup.com/layered-ink
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  Has anyone released a GTP-3 annealing program that will take what you wrote and make it perfectly clear to someone with less reading comprehension by some fixed amount? That would be amazing..
• learnstats2 6y ago
  I'd note that "strong writing skills" here means being able to communicate information fluently, not having perfect grammar and spelling. Those skills are not always in alignment - I've worked happily with great written communicators who couldn't spell for shift.
• exabrial 6y ago
  Pro tip: you should have been doing this pre-covid instead of asking irrelevant algorithm questions.
• slumdev 6y ago
  Programming ability is related more to language ability than to math: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60661-8
  • rozab 6y ago
    This study used a 10 session beginner Python course, and was graded almost entirely with multiple choice quizzes rather than actual problem solving. Seems like they ended up testing participants' ability to quickly memorise syntax and language constructs rather than more general programming skills. I have seen blog posts by middle/high school comp sci teachers saying that language skills are a greater predictor of success in their classes than maths, but it seems like this type of student is less likely to pursue a career in programming.
    • drcoopster 6y ago
      It's complicated, right? Effective writing and reading comprehension are necessary to produce and parse code of any sort. Math is necessary to construct and analyze the algorithms that are implemented or described in the code. You can be a good coder (writing) but not a great engineer (math). Likewise the converse is also true.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• eli 6y ago
  Also non-remote employees
• drewg123 6y ago
  I'm an IC who has worked remote for 18 of the last 20 years. Effective communication is critical. I tell my teenage son that my most important class in high school was actually English. Being able to write accurately, concisely, and persuasively is critically important, even when you're in a technical role.
• postit 6y ago
  I'd say effective communication is more important than strong writing skills. I used to work with someone that could write 300 pages to communicate something that could have been communicated with a single sentence. I used to work with someone who wold span the team channel for hours to communicate something that he could take them time to properly craft a complete message. Prolixity and noise can happen on both written and spoken forms. Getting people who can balance all the ins and outs of communication is the key.
  • drcoopster 6y ago
    Is strong writing not also effective by definition?
• a4444f 6y ago
  To find great remote employees, prioritize candidates with strong thinking skills.
• DenisM 6y ago
  I'm afraid that hiring for writing skills will reduce your pool of hires by 99%. I expect it would be more fruitful to create a workflow around a combination of video calls and writing that would take the strong sides of each to buttress the weaknesses of the other.
• Ansil849 6y ago
  Conversely, I think employers should actively promote writing and communications training programs to send staff to. One of the people I previously had the pleasure of working next to was absolutely brilliant in his field (malware reversing, broadly), but watching his presentations was an awkward experience. He just could not communicate his work effectively, either in a written or spoken medium and was someone who would have benefited immensely from a writing and presentation workshop.
  • cratermoon 6y ago
    Given how many of my fellow students in college studying math/science were convinced that the required english lit/composition course was a waste of time, and disdained the liberal arts generally, this is a problem that arises early in education somehow. How did we end up here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxjT7veKi9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxjT7veKi9c
    • Ansil849 6y ago
      Honestly, I feel like the maths and science lecturers are the source for reinforcing the paradigm that their job is simply to teach maths and science, not effective communications of the topics. Many of them likely feel the same way as their students. At the bare minimum, they should explicitly and repeatedly mention in their courses the importance of taking writing classes, if not have an entire part of their own curricula devoted to these topics.
      • cratermoon 6y ago
        The number of educators with terrible communications skills is a real problem, and I'm not talking about language/cultural differences, either. In higher education, with the focus on research and publish-or-perish over teaching, there are many disincentives to effective communication and writing is constrained to the academic style.
• reubenswartz 6y ago
  I agree, and I'd go so far as to say that it's important for most office workers, even if you're not planning to be remote. Writing is a great proxy for thinking, and a lot of people have great thoughts, but aren't good at organizing those thoughts into a coherent story. (Note that there are a lot of people who think they're "good at writing" because they know a lot of words and can commit them to the screen quickly, and a lot of people who think they are bad at writing because they get a mental block trying to commit words to the screen.)
• mrozbarry 6y ago
  It's not just writing, good communication skills in general, and this applies to non-remote, too. This is just common sense. Don't hire someone that can't or won't communicate well with you and your team. Writing is a good start, but I think a lot of people are using audio and video calls for work.