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Most of the company can barely type. Many don’t speak fluent English. They will not able to write to communicate. This may work with a well functioning team an
by geraldwhen 2y ago
Most of the company can barely type. Many don’t speak fluent English. They will not able to write to communicate.
This may work with a well functioning team and organization where everyone has basic literacy skills, but I suspect every big co is similar.
- tjpnz 2y agoSpeaking English poorly doesn't imply writing will be as poor. I work in Japan and have colleagues who I'll struggle to communicate with verbally, yet I don't have the same issue over text.
- soneca 2y agoAgree. I communicate much better writing English than speaking English. I have time to think and I use Grammarly which helps a lot. I may make the same grammar and orthography mistakes, but at least there is not an additional pronunciation challenge. But I do consider myself fluent in English (even if far from perfect). I don’t know if that would still be true to someone not fluent in English
- zahllos 2y agoI've gone the other way in my life (native English speaker learning several other languages. I speak one fluently, and two others at a basic level. I live in continental Europe and the country I'm in has 3 official and 4 national languages). One of my language teachers said babies learn listening first, then speaking, then reading and finally writing, whereas adults it is the other way around: adults find it easiest to deal with writing because they control the context and it is in their own time, then reading because although there might be unexpected constructions, it is again in their own time. Then speaking for the same reason as writing, except timing is more real time, and finally listening is the hardest challenge, because it requires real time understanding of the context. So I agree that I would expect written communication to be easier to deal with for many non natives of any language.
- makeitdouble 2y agoIt feels like you'll have to play the communication game in hard mode either way, I don't see any guide that will help you short of "spare a lot of time, make efforts and try to find ways that are somewhat efficient". In my experience written communication worked a lot better when people were not at ease with the subject or the language, as you could do it asynchronously and they could edit themselves easily. Meetings had an incredible amount of back and forth with ton of whiteboarding and people only reacting after we'd come to a conclusion that we rewrite in plain words. It's still a pain to do that in written form, but each side isn't stuck in meetings for 5 hours at least.
- geraldwhen 2y agoWhen I say can’t type, I mean it. Think <10 words per minute. This will exclude most people from any meaningful interactions.
- makeitdouble 2y agoDumb question perhaps, but does dictation work for you ? Otherwise, yes, in that case there's just no way around voice communication.
- geraldwhen 2y agoDictation has to be corrected and requires knowledge of how to use a computer. I’m telling you that most of the employees at BigCo have the technical prowess of proverbial grandparents. The fact that they can open zoom and outlook at all is a small miracle.
- denton-scratch 2y ago> Most of the company can barely type. Many don’t speak fluent English. They will not able to write to communicate. If they can't speak fluent English, then long-form messages are beside the point; they're beyond the reach of either Slack or face-to-face meetings. I've never worked for a firm in which a significant part of the staff were functionally illiterate, I'm glad to say. > I suspect every big co is similar That doesn't gel with my experince.