11 ms·

What if we hired writers like we hire developers

185 points by antrix 14y ago

Smudge 14y ago
The tongue twister was a dead giveaway. Personally, I'd walk out (or hang up) as soon as the Oxford Comma came up, but I have less patience than most.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  Really? I thought the Oxford Comma question was the only useful one there. You might have to define the term but it's good at showing basic knowledge of grammar conventions. Anyway this article has a point that this process isn't effective for finding good writers, but I'll be damned if asking people to write one or two sentences doesn't filter out the illiterate people that wander in your door (think FizzBuzz).
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    A writing sample is a great filter. Any good writer will jump at the chance to write out a quick (and good) piece of text if it means they might get paid.
    - simonbrown 14y ago
      Why would a good writer be any more likely to do this than a bad writer? Surely it would depend on market conditions?
      - mkr-hn 14y ago
        It's easy to write out a few sentences or a paragraph for something you're interested in. If you really want to test a writer, ask them for their opinion on traditional publishing. There's no "right" answer, but most writers have an opinion on it and shouldn't have trouble writing a little on the subject.
  - roc 14y ago
    The Oxford Comma question isn't like FizzBuzz, it's like a question on K&R vs BSD brace style. It's irrelevant trivia. All you're going to do is trip up people who may not have been exposed to the terminology or hadn't encountered both styles yet. Any writer can handle either style and knowing the terms says nothing about whether someone can write. FizzBuzz is about making sure someone has a basic handle on the actual job. An equivalent for writers would be to ask for a quick poem or three sentence story or something.
Gustomaximus 14y ago
I had to hire a writer previously. Not being a writer, and never having done this before I was wondering what I could ask them. But it seems more relevant just to ask them to write something than to quiz them or ask them to repeat tongue twisters (I don't understand the benefit of that). So I did 2 rounds where I asked candidates to write a short article on a topic with some loose instructions. I figured, whatever they answer in interview questions the real candidate I wanted will be found based on what article they chose to write and the actual quality of their writing. For the more typical Q&A interview process all I wanted to find out was would they be a good cultural fit. Perhaps I oversimplified it but it worked out quite well.
mkr-hn 14y ago
edit: I should be less eager to click buttons ---- Where do I begin… 'spelling of conscientious' This would be covered in the first editing pass when I turn the spell checker on. I don't see what this is meant to demonstrate. Even good writers have trouble remembering how some words are spelled. 'explain oxford comma' What's the point of this? 'repeating a tongue twister; I like the “Betty Botter bought a bit of butter” one.' What's the point of this? 'Questions about rules in ‘Elements of Style‘' Elements of Style is not a rulebook. It's a stylebook. 'A few puzzles to test their creativity.' A good writer is like a good designer. You either like their style or you don't. If you don't, you'd never ask them in for the interview. A quick writing sample is the only test of creativity you need. 'More spellings and grammar questions.' A writing sample is all you need to assess grammar and spelling competence. My grammers is fine, but I couldn't recite rules and practices in a test. 'Some domain related question, for e.g. ask sports writer, the dates when the last football world cup was played.' A good writer knows how to research. If you need an x writer for some cultural reason then you'd ask for that in the ad. This is a poor filter since it doesn't tell you how well a writer can write on the subject. 'Question on lexical roots of some words.' Is this an English class or an interview? I would show myself the door pretty quickly and advise all my writer friends not to consider your company. Your interview questions display a serious ignorance of the craft of writing. Save yourself some headaches and ask the best writer in your office to hire other writers. The sort questions you ask are easily rehearsed by a bad writer with good memory.
- bobbles 14y ago
  Did you stop reading halfway? The entire point of the article is that you would never hire a creative writer using these criteria, and yet they are the types of criteria being used for 'creative developers'.
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    Apparently I did! I should be less eager to click buttons. I've edited a little note in at the top so I won't get any impulsive downvotes.
- swang 14y ago
FreakLegion 14y ago
> Good spellings and knowledge of grammar rules does not indicate a good writer, and there are tools (spelling/grammar check) and (editorial) processes to take care of that. Good grammar doesn't indicate a good writer, but bad grammar does indicate a bad one[1]. (Good grammar meaning, in this case, an ear for language. Good writers avoid grammatical errors because grammatical errors sound wrong, like an off-pitch note to a musician[2]. Explicit knowledge of grammar isn't particularly important. For example, good writers may not know what the subjunctive mood is, but they know how and when to use it. Conversely, a writer who has the knowledge but lacks the ear is in for a rough ride.) 1. Unless it's for effect, obviously, which can range from Rimbaud's "Je est un autre" to Zora Neal Hurston. 2. Which, of course, may also be done for effect. Which is why listing out rules (about writing, about music, etc.) is so fruitless. Which is true even if the rule is "Don't start three sentences in a row with the word 'which.'"
- mbell 14y ago
  I agree with your premise but your post is a case in point. There are as many words inside parenthesis as outside making it incredibly confusing to read. Even worse, you have a reference '[2]' nested inside parenthesis. Using parenthesis like this indicates that it should be either a footnote or worded differently. Nesting it just makes my brain shut off. I fall victim to using parenthesis in this manor myself quite often, its a hard habit to get out of.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    Indeed. But in this manor is the median the messuage? (Despite what my spell check says, there are no misspellings there. A dictionary might be useful though ;-) Apologies at picking on typos and showing off knowledge of obscure words.)
    - zem 14y ago
      the cute thing is, it even makes sense
- einhverfr 14y ago
brandnewlow 14y ago
At many newspapers they ask prospective reporters for 1. Clips (writing samples) 2. A copy editing test (to make sure they write cleanly) 3. Actual stories written from some facts or info provided. That's not so different from asking a developer to write some code during technical interviews. Good clean copy requires similar precision, but your compiler happens to be a human.
- Cd00d 14y ago
  I think it's very different to give someone a weekend to do an edit test and story sample, than to demand code whilst looking over the applicant's shoulder. One is much like how normal work is done, and the other adds unnecessary stress and pressure that is rare in a functioning workplace.
  - roc 14y ago
    So give them the weekend to do the code test.
kkowalczyk 14y ago
This ignores different realities in how programmers and writers work. If you're hiring a writer, you cam ask to see his previous work. Unless he worked for CIA, he can point to books he's written, articles he published etc. You can then read them and that's all you need to make a decision if he's competent enough (you might still interview for cultural fit). If you're hiring a senior engineer that claims he spent last 5 years coding Big Table at Google, you have to take his word for it. It's not that you wouldn't like to see all his past checkins, you just can't in most cases. Not being able to see past work, we do the next best thing: interviews, coding questions etc. The simple explanation is: we don't hire programmers like writers because we can't, not because people hiring programmers are inexplicably so much more incompetent than people hiring writers (despite running much more profitable businesses). This is changing a bit due to open-source in that more and more people are hired like writers i.e. based on their publicly available past work, but it'll never be the case that every programmer will be able to show his past code.
- jaems33 14y ago
  Where is the fine line between coding tests and spec work? I'm not a programmer, but I've seen startups co-founded by engineers try hiring designers in a similar fashion to I assume programmers as they test designers with a variety of unpaid projects. I've found it to be pretty annoying given that I've already shown a portfolio of work and it's not unlike spec work. I get that some people may have fabricated their history, but that's why some companies do a trial period before committing to a full-time gig.
  - kkowalczyk 14y ago
    I don't think the line is fine. If I ask someone to implement a linked list during 1hr interview, it's clear that it's not because I need a linked list implementation in my company. If I ask someone to stay for a week to work on the company's code base, that's clearly a work that should be paid for at a market rate. Similarly, I'm pretty sure that you, as a designer, know without a doubt when company's request crosses the line from "I need to make sure you know what you're doing" to "I need you to do free work for me".
  - 14y ago
TamDenholm 14y ago
Someone once made a blog with the same argument but used the comparison of a mechanic instead. Anyone know the URL?
- slamdunc 14y ago
  This might be the one you're remembering: http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/05/what-if-drivers-were-hired-like.html http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/05/what-if-drivers-were-hired-li...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
kafkaesque 14y ago
I'm a professional writer; i.e., I get paid to write. I didn't study journalism but I was in an interdisciplinary programme that consisted of literature, history, and language (somewhat of a modern day philology degree) in Canada. I've just recently started to learn how to program. I think if this hiring process works for you, great! But as someone who recently started learning to program, I must say writers are vastly different from developers. There are different kinds of writing. A novelist and a poet (and maybe even an essayist) cannot write business letters. Business writing is vastly different from any creative writing, an SEO writer is neither a creative writer nor a business writer, and so on and so forth. The difference between business writing and creative writing is each follow different rules. That is, each discipline gets away with different things. Creative writing exploits language any which way possible to get a point across, even if it means breaking the rules. Business writers are conservative writers. They follow grammar rules closer, as well as orthography. Most contemporary creative writers use post-structuralist techniques when telling a story; e.g., levels of narration that go from a protagonist to a secondary character to the world in which the book takes place to a far more omniscient narration and much more (narrative modes can get extremely complex). And if they don't, it is almost a given that a type of meta analysis of it is acceptable and encouraged (nowadays, especially). I don't mean to be condescending but business writers use a more primitive form of writing: straight to the point, the nitty-gritty, the meat of the matter. Business writers specialize in a different form of writing. They have more in common with journalists in that they do not exploit language, but seek the simplest form to explain a concept and be completely understood with no room for misinterpretation. I've always said half-jokingly that journalists aren't writers, because they deal with facts and events. I say this meaning journalists do not explore the frightening realm of creative writing, they only dabble in it. Few have ventured to write creatively within their pieces or let abstract concepts permeate throughout an entire piece. For me, journalists and business writers are data-driven and are hard empiricists. There is no market for creative journalists in the entire sense of the word "creative". When companies say "creative" they mean "Can you come up with an idea in which our audience is interested?" The proof is actually in the tasting. You say you ask your potential hires to <i>spell</i> out a word. There is your first mistake. Do you know how many great writers were poor spellers? Rarely have I seen great writers who are also great spellers. Great writers have great ideas. This is why the world invented editors. It is an old cliché, but one that is true. What's more: do you know professors still teach and believe this? Right, this isn't Academia, and this brings me to another point. Those who do not major in journalism learn to write differently. Most of my peers were bad writers, but they might be a perfect match for a business's needs because they abide by the parameters set by the company. This brings me back to the point that in most business settings, people do not want creative writers. They want someone who writes within the parameters the business calls for or the higher-ups assign. The Oxford comma. How much does a writer gain by knowing a definition of a word? Let me expand on what Richard Feynman said about what things are called: "I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something". Definitions belong to the category of "knowing the name of something". The problem with this type of 'knowledge' is, most of the time, the interviewer, as someone unfamiliar with the mechanics of language, does not have the capability to ask and know what function the comma holds when placed in a list before a coordinating conjunction. You are testing how many words a writer knows. So, you might as well ask what a Harvard comma is, just in case, to test if the hire knows this and many other words. Anybody can be a technical writer. Anybody can learn the simple rules of language enough to convey a comprehensible idea. You're essentially looking for a person who fits your idea of a good writer, which should be understood as being a subjective notion. You have a process for knowing who can write best sellers? What are you waiting for? There is lots of money you can be making and, as I'm sure you are a man of science, you can test your hypothesis of being able to pump out best-selling writers. Seriously. No. Writing a best seller is a completely different ball game, but please feel free to prove me wrong by giving me some results. Also, I'd just like to clarify that I've not even touched upon the nuances and differing grammar rules from the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. Suffice it to say that comma splices are not always incorrect depending on where you live and there are different rules for comma usage. Also, the Elements of Style is an archaic and misguided book, for the most part. None of my professors ever stressed its importance or use. Unfortunately, I've run out of time and must go now. I wish I could touch on other points! Sorry for any 'style errors' - I've not proofread this :P
rp77 14y ago
he probably meant assessing and not accessing in the phone screening part - would he have passed his own interview?
tokenadult 14y ago
It looks like it's time to recycle some electrons and post the FAQ that Hacker News readers have helped me put together with their previous thoughtful comments about hiring procedures. There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274 http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%... sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations. The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well (but only about at the 0.5 level, standing alone). One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes. Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment), it is legally risk to give job applicants general mental ability tests such as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196... interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that general intelligence tests used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact" on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words, a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain-teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States, allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the first place.) The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi-deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes. http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl... Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures, a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature, for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann: "Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure." http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri... But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g., Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing (i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use them)."
aestetix 14y ago
I am pretty sure James Joyce would fail this test.
- excuse-me 14y ago
  I don't know - I can see job offers that say we are specifically looking for experience in consonants not vowels. Or we need 5 years experience of using the word "necessary"
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jinfiesto 14y ago
As a writer, some of this strikes me as dumb. There are a lot of people who aren't "writers" that I'd be glad to hire. Why would you grill someone on the rules in the Elements of Style? They can look that sort of thing up. If anything, I'd be more interested to see if they absorbed the real lessons in the Elements of Style. (Hint: Not the rules.) Also: "We have found that we are able to hire great writer from this process, who are able to create award winning content, whether it is a short article or a book." Hire a copy editor.
- antrix 14y ago
  You should read the full article.. the hiring writers bit is just a parody.
bambax 14y ago
A developer is a writer; one writes English and the other writes code, but they both write to a human audience (the only "code" a machine needs to see is 0s and 1s; programming languages are for humans). So there really shouldn't be a big difference in hiring a writer vs. a developer; and a good test would probably be to have developers write essays in English about a technical question: can they make themselves understood? I would not hire a developer who is incapable of explaining what he's doing, why he's doing it, what the other options are, etc. Wouldn't it be a good technique to have interviewees bring an example of their own code that they're especially proud of, and have them explain what it does and why it's great?
- babarock 14y ago
  > A developer is a writer; one writes English and the other writes code, but they both write to a human audience (the only "code" a machine needs to see is 0s and 1s; programming languages are for humans). I definitely agree with this! That's what I had been thinking the whole time while reading the articles and the comment threads. This is also my motto, here in the office. It's too simple to say that there are differences between writers and programmers. I think "writer" should be treated as an umbrella term that encompasses braod ranges of skills. After all, a journalist, a poet, a technical writer and a translator aren't really doing the same thing, are they? I like to believe that the core subset of skills needed to be one of these is also needed (or at least highly valued) to be a good programmer. Programming is writing. Absolutely.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  That's kind of an interesting point. People assume that skill in programming is generally correlated with Math skill and there is certainly some truth to that. However I generally find that people who write sloppy English also write sloppy code.
brudgers 14y ago
No Fizz Buzz for writers? "Write a 20 line poem. Rhyme every third line with "Fizz" and every fifth line with "Buzz."
splicer 14y ago
If you were hiring an editor, rather than a writer, asking about the Oxford comma is perfectly reasonable.
tocomment 14y ago
I think it would be funny to do one of these for hiring plumbers. And you ask them what toilets they have unclogged outside of work for their own projects. And if they tell you they won't unclog toilets if they don't get paid, you dismiss them for having no passion for their work ...
snitzr 14y ago
I'm an English major and I sweat bullets before I read to the "For the naysayers" part. I wouldn't have gotten past the phone screen.
gisikw 14y ago
Is this not how we hire writers?!

185 points by antrix 14y ago

The tongue twister was a dead giveaway. Personally, I'd walk out (or hang up) as soon as the Oxford Comma came up, but I have less patience than most.

Dylan16807 14y ago
Really? I thought the Oxford Comma question was the only useful one there. You might have to define the term but it's good at showing basic knowledge of grammar conventions. Anyway this article has a point that this process isn't effective for finding good writers, but I'll be damned if asking people to write one or two sentences doesn't filter out the illiterate people that wander in your door (think FizzBuzz).
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  A writing sample is a great filter. Any good writer will jump at the chance to write out a quick (and good) piece of text if it means they might get paid.
  - simonbrown 14y ago
    Why would a good writer be any more likely to do this than a bad writer? Surely it would depend on market conditions?
    - mkr-hn 14y ago
      It's easy to write out a few sentences or a paragraph for something you're interested in. If you really want to test a writer, ask them for their opinion on traditional publishing. There's no "right" answer, but most writers have an opinion on it and shouldn't have trouble writing a little on the subject.
- roc 14y ago
  The Oxford Comma question isn't like FizzBuzz, it's like a question on K&R vs BSD brace style. It's irrelevant trivia. All you're going to do is trip up people who may not have been exposed to the terminology or hadn't encountered both styles yet. Any writer can handle either style and knowing the terms says nothing about whether someone can write. FizzBuzz is about making sure someone has a basic handle on the actual job. An equivalent for writers would be to ask for a quick poem or three sentence story or something.

Gustomaximus 14y ago

I had to hire a writer previously. Not being a writer, and never having done this before I was wondering what I could ask them. But it seems more relevant just to ask them to write something than to quiz them or ask them to repeat tongue twisters (I don't understand the benefit of that). So I did 2 rounds where I asked candidates to write a short article on a topic with some loose instructions. I figured, whatever they answer in interview questions the real candidate I wanted will be found based on what article they chose to write and the actual quality of their writing. For the more typical Q&A interview process all I wanted to find out was would they be a good cultural fit. Perhaps I oversimplified it but it worked out quite well.

mkr-hn 14y ago

edit: I should be less eager to click buttons ---- Where do I begin… 'spelling of conscientious' This would be covered in the first editing pass when I turn the spell checker on. I don't see what this is meant to demonstrate. Even good writers have trouble remembering how some words are spelled. 'explain oxford comma' What's the point of this? 'repeating a tongue twister; I like the “Betty Botter bought a bit of butter” one.' What's the point of this? 'Questions about rules in ‘Elements of Style‘' Elements of Style is not a rulebook. It's a stylebook. 'A few puzzles to test their creativity.' A good writer is like a good designer. You either like their style or you don't. If you don't, you'd never ask them in for the interview. A quick writing sample is the only test of creativity you need. 'More spellings and grammar questions.' A writing sample is all you need to assess grammar and spelling competence. My grammers is fine, but I couldn't recite rules and practices in a test. 'Some domain related question, for e.g. ask sports writer, the dates when the last football world cup was played.' A good writer knows how to research. If you need an x writer for some cultural reason then you'd ask for that in the ad. This is a poor filter since it doesn't tell you how well a writer can write on the subject. 'Question on lexical roots of some words.' Is this an English class or an interview? I would show myself the door pretty quickly and advise all my writer friends not to consider your company. Your interview questions display a serious ignorance of the craft of writing. Save yourself some headaches and ask the best writer in your office to hire other writers. The sort questions you ask are easily rehearsed by a bad writer with good memory.

bobbles 14y ago
Did you stop reading halfway? The entire point of the article is that you would never hire a creative writer using these criteria, and yet they are the types of criteria being used for 'creative developers'.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  Apparently I did! I should be less eager to click buttons. I've edited a little note in at the top so I won't get any impulsive downvotes.
swang 14y ago

FreakLegion 14y ago

> Good spellings and knowledge of grammar rules does not indicate a good writer, and there are tools (spelling/grammar check) and (editorial) processes to take care of that. Good grammar doesn't indicate a good writer, but bad grammar does indicate a bad one[1]. (Good grammar meaning, in this case, an ear for language. Good writers avoid grammatical errors because grammatical errors sound wrong, like an off-pitch note to a musician[2]. Explicit knowledge of grammar isn't particularly important. For example, good writers may not know what the subjunctive mood is, but they know how and when to use it. Conversely, a writer who has the knowledge but lacks the ear is in for a rough ride.) 1. Unless it's for effect, obviously, which can range from Rimbaud's "Je est un autre" to Zora Neal Hurston. 2. Which, of course, may also be done for effect. Which is why listing out rules (about writing, about music, etc.) is so fruitless. Which is true even if the rule is "Don't start three sentences in a row with the word 'which.'"

mbell 14y ago
I agree with your premise but your post is a case in point. There are as many words inside parenthesis as outside making it incredibly confusing to read. Even worse, you have a reference '[2]' nested inside parenthesis. Using parenthesis like this indicates that it should be either a footnote or worded differently. Nesting it just makes my brain shut off. I fall victim to using parenthesis in this manor myself quite often, its a hard habit to get out of.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  Indeed. But in this manor is the median the messuage? (Despite what my spell check says, there are no misspellings there. A dictionary might be useful though ;-) Apologies at picking on typos and showing off knowledge of obscure words.)
  - zem 14y ago
    the cute thing is, it even makes sense
einhverfr 14y ago

brandnewlow 14y ago

At many newspapers they ask prospective reporters for 1. Clips (writing samples) 2. A copy editing test (to make sure they write cleanly) 3. Actual stories written from some facts or info provided. That's not so different from asking a developer to write some code during technical interviews. Good clean copy requires similar precision, but your compiler happens to be a human.

Cd00d 14y ago
I think it's very different to give someone a weekend to do an edit test and story sample, than to demand code whilst looking over the applicant's shoulder. One is much like how normal work is done, and the other adds unnecessary stress and pressure that is rare in a functioning workplace.
- roc 14y ago
  So give them the weekend to do the code test.

kkowalczyk 14y ago

This ignores different realities in how programmers and writers work. If you're hiring a writer, you cam ask to see his previous work. Unless he worked for CIA, he can point to books he's written, articles he published etc. You can then read them and that's all you need to make a decision if he's competent enough (you might still interview for cultural fit). If you're hiring a senior engineer that claims he spent last 5 years coding Big Table at Google, you have to take his word for it. It's not that you wouldn't like to see all his past checkins, you just can't in most cases. Not being able to see past work, we do the next best thing: interviews, coding questions etc. The simple explanation is: we don't hire programmers like writers because we can't, not because people hiring programmers are inexplicably so much more incompetent than people hiring writers (despite running much more profitable businesses). This is changing a bit due to open-source in that more and more people are hired like writers i.e. based on their publicly available past work, but it'll never be the case that every programmer will be able to show his past code.

jaems33 14y ago
Where is the fine line between coding tests and spec work? I'm not a programmer, but I've seen startups co-founded by engineers try hiring designers in a similar fashion to I assume programmers as they test designers with a variety of unpaid projects. I've found it to be pretty annoying given that I've already shown a portfolio of work and it's not unlike spec work. I get that some people may have fabricated their history, but that's why some companies do a trial period before committing to a full-time gig.
- kkowalczyk 14y ago
  I don't think the line is fine. If I ask someone to implement a linked list during 1hr interview, it's clear that it's not because I need a linked list implementation in my company. If I ask someone to stay for a week to work on the company's code base, that's clearly a work that should be paid for at a market rate. Similarly, I'm pretty sure that you, as a designer, know without a doubt when company's request crosses the line from "I need to make sure you know what you're doing" to "I need you to do free work for me".
- 14y ago

TamDenholm 14y ago

Someone once made a blog with the same argument but used the comparison of a mechanic instead. Anyone know the URL?

slamdunc 14y ago
This might be the one you're remembering: http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/05/what-if-drivers-were-hired-like.html http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/05/what-if-drivers-were-hired-li...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

kafkaesque 14y ago

I'm a professional writer; i.e., I get paid to write. I didn't study journalism but I was in an interdisciplinary programme that consisted of literature, history, and language (somewhat of a modern day philology degree) in Canada. I've just recently started to learn how to program. I think if this hiring process works for you, great! But as someone who recently started learning to program, I must say writers are vastly different from developers. There are different kinds of writing. A novelist and a poet (and maybe even an essayist) cannot write business letters. Business writing is vastly different from any creative writing, an SEO writer is neither a creative writer nor a business writer, and so on and so forth. The difference between business writing and creative writing is each follow different rules. That is, each discipline gets away with different things. Creative writing exploits language any which way possible to get a point across, even if it means breaking the rules. Business writers are conservative writers. They follow grammar rules closer, as well as orthography. Most contemporary creative writers use post-structuralist techniques when telling a story; e.g., levels of narration that go from a protagonist to a secondary character to the world in which the book takes place to a far more omniscient narration and much more (narrative modes can get extremely complex). And if they don't, it is almost a given that a type of meta analysis of it is acceptable and encouraged (nowadays, especially). I don't mean to be condescending but business writers use a more primitive form of writing: straight to the point, the nitty-gritty, the meat of the matter. Business writers specialize in a different form of writing. They have more in common with journalists in that they do not exploit language, but seek the simplest form to explain a concept and be completely understood with no room for misinterpretation. I've always said half-jokingly that journalists aren't writers, because they deal with facts and events. I say this meaning journalists do not explore the frightening realm of creative writing, they only dabble in it. Few have ventured to write creatively within their pieces or let abstract concepts permeate throughout an entire piece. For me, journalists and business writers are data-driven and are hard empiricists. There is no market for creative journalists in the entire sense of the word "creative". When companies say "creative" they mean "Can you come up with an idea in which our audience is interested?" The proof is actually in the tasting. You say you ask your potential hires to <i>spell</i> out a word. There is your first mistake. Do you know how many great writers were poor spellers? Rarely have I seen great writers who are also great spellers. Great writers have great ideas. This is why the world invented editors. It is an old cliché, but one that is true. What's more: do you know professors still teach and believe this? Right, this isn't Academia, and this brings me to another point. Those who do not major in journalism learn to write differently. Most of my peers were bad writers, but they might be a perfect match for a business's needs because they abide by the parameters set by the company. This brings me back to the point that in most business settings, people do not want creative writers. They want someone who writes within the parameters the business calls for or the higher-ups assign. The Oxford comma. How much does a writer gain by knowing a definition of a word? Let me expand on what Richard Feynman said about what things are called: "I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something". Definitions belong to the category of "knowing the name of something". The problem with this type of 'knowledge' is, most of the time, the interviewer, as someone unfamiliar with the mechanics of language, does not have the capability to ask and know what function the comma holds when placed in a list before a coordinating conjunction. You are testing how many words a writer knows. So, you might as well ask what a Harvard comma is, just in case, to test if the hire knows this and many other words. Anybody can be a technical writer. Anybody can learn the simple rules of language enough to convey a comprehensible idea. You're essentially looking for a person who fits your idea of a good writer, which should be understood as being a subjective notion. You have a process for knowing who can write best sellers? What are you waiting for? There is lots of money you can be making and, as I'm sure you are a man of science, you can test your hypothesis of being able to pump out best-selling writers. Seriously. No. Writing a best seller is a completely different ball game, but please feel free to prove me wrong by giving me some results. Also, I'd just like to clarify that I've not even touched upon the nuances and differing grammar rules from the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. Suffice it to say that comma splices are not always incorrect depending on where you live and there are different rules for comma usage. Also, the Elements of Style is an archaic and misguided book, for the most part. None of my professors ever stressed its importance or use. Unfortunately, I've run out of time and must go now. I wish I could touch on other points! Sorry for any 'style errors' - I've not proofread this :P

rp77 14y ago

he probably meant assessing and not accessing in the phone screening part - would he have passed his own interview?

tokenadult 14y ago

It looks like it's time to recycle some electrons and post the FAQ that Hacker News readers have helped me put together with their previous thoughtful comments about hiring procedures. There are many discussions here on HN about company hiring procedures. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have gathered here in a FAQ file. The review article by Frank L. Schmidt and John E. Hunter, "The Validity and Utility of Selection Models in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274 http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%... sums up, current to 1998, a meta-analysis of much of the HUGE peer-reviewed professional literature on the industrial and organizational psychology devoted to business hiring procedures. There are many kinds of hiring criteria, such as in-person interviews, telephone interviews, resume reviews for job experience, checks for academic credentials, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations. The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well (but only about at the 0.5 level, standing alone). One is a general mental ability (GMA) test (an IQ-like test, such as the Wonderlic personnel screening test). Another is a work-sample test, where the applicant does an actual task or group of tasks like what the applicant will do on the job if hired. Each of these kinds of tests has about the same validity in screening applicants for jobs, with the general mental ability test better predicting success for applicants who will be trained into a new job. Neither is perfect (both miss some good performers on the job, and select some bad performers on the job), but both are better than any other single-factor hiring procedure that has been tested in rigorous research, across a wide variety of occupations. So if you are hiring for your company, it's a good idea to think about how to build a work-sample test into all of your hiring processes. Because of a Supreme Court decision in the United States (the decision does not apply in other countries, which have different statutes about employment), it is legally risk to give job applicants general mental ability tests such as a straight-up IQ test (as was commonplace in my parents' generation) as a routine part of hiring procedures. The Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971) case http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24 http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196... interpreted a federal statute about employment discrimination and held that general intelligence tests used in hiring that could have a "disparate impact" on applicants of some protected classes must "bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used." In other words, a company that wants to use a test like the Wonderlic, or like the SAT, or like the current WAIS or Stanford-Binet IQ tests, in a hiring procedure had best conduct a specific validation study of the test related to performance on the job in question. Some companies do the validation study, and use IQ-like tests in hiring. Other companies use IQ-like tests in hiring and hope that no one sues (which is not what I would advise any company). Note that a brain-teaser-type test used in a hiring procedure could be challenged as illegal if it can be shown to have disparate impact on some job applicants. A company defending a brain-teaser test for hiring would have to defend it by showing it is supported by a validation study demonstrating that the test is related to successful performance on the job. Such validation studies can be quite expensive. (Companies outside the United States are regulated by different laws. One other big difference between the United States and other countries is the relative ease with which workers may be fired in the United States, allowing companies to correct hiring mistakes by terminating the employment of the workers they hired mistakenly. The more legal protections a worker has from being fired, the more reluctant companies will be about hiring in the first place.) The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA271&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrlOV&sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA95&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&ots=iCXkgXrnMW&sig=LKLi-deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=SRv-GZkw6... Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes. http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R... http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWlMYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA9&dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl... Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt & Hunter (1998) article showed that multi-factor procedures work better than single-factor procedures, a summary of that article we can find in the current professional literature, for example "Reasons for being selective when choosing personnel selection procedures" (2010) by Cornelius J. König, Ute-Christine Klehe, Matthias Berchtold, and Martin Kleinmann: "Choosing personnel selection procedures could be so simple: Grab your copy of Schmidt and Hunter (1998) and read their Table 1 (again). This should remind you to use a general mental ability (GMA) test in combination with an integrity test, a structured interview, a work sample test, and/or a conscientiousness measure." http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri... But the 2010 article notes, looking at actual practice of companies around the world, "However, this idea does not seem to capture what is actually happening in organizations, as practitioners worldwide often use procedures with low predictive validity and regularly ignore procedures that are more valid (e.g., Di Milia, 2004; Lievens & De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, & Page, 1999; Scholarios & Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, & Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, & McDonnell, 2002). For example, the highly valid work sample tests are hardly used in the US, and the potentially rather useless procedure of graphology (Dean, 1992; Neter & Ben-Shakhar, 1989) is applied somewhere between occasionally and often in France (Ryan et al., 1999). In Germany, the use of GMA tests is reported to be low and to be decreasing (i.e., only 30% of the companies surveyed by Schuler et al., 2007, now use them)."

aestetix 14y ago

I am pretty sure James Joyce would fail this test.

excuse-me 14y ago
I don't know - I can see job offers that say we are specifically looking for experience in consonants not vowels. Or we need 5 years experience of using the word "necessary"

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jinfiesto 14y ago

As a writer, some of this strikes me as dumb. There are a lot of people who aren't "writers" that I'd be glad to hire. Why would you grill someone on the rules in the Elements of Style? They can look that sort of thing up. If anything, I'd be more interested to see if they absorbed the real lessons in the Elements of Style. (Hint: Not the rules.) Also: "We have found that we are able to hire great writer from this process, who are able to create award winning content, whether it is a short article or a book." Hire a copy editor.

antrix 14y ago
You should read the full article.. the hiring writers bit is just a parody.

bambax 14y ago

A developer is a writer; one writes English and the other writes code, but they both write to a human audience (the only "code" a machine needs to see is 0s and 1s; programming languages are for humans). So there really shouldn't be a big difference in hiring a writer vs. a developer; and a good test would probably be to have developers write essays in English about a technical question: can they make themselves understood? I would not hire a developer who is incapable of explaining what he's doing, why he's doing it, what the other options are, etc. Wouldn't it be a good technique to have interviewees bring an example of their own code that they're especially proud of, and have them explain what it does and why it's great?

babarock 14y ago
> A developer is a writer; one writes English and the other writes code, but they both write to a human audience (the only "code" a machine needs to see is 0s and 1s; programming languages are for humans). I definitely agree with this! That's what I had been thinking the whole time while reading the articles and the comment threads. This is also my motto, here in the office. It's too simple to say that there are differences between writers and programmers. I think "writer" should be treated as an umbrella term that encompasses braod ranges of skills. After all, a journalist, a poet, a technical writer and a translator aren't really doing the same thing, are they? I like to believe that the core subset of skills needed to be one of these is also needed (or at least highly valued) to be a good programmer. Programming is writing. Absolutely.
jiggy2011 14y ago
That's kind of an interesting point. People assume that skill in programming is generally correlated with Math skill and there is certainly some truth to that. However I generally find that people who write sloppy English also write sloppy code.

brudgers 14y ago

No Fizz Buzz for writers? "Write a 20 line poem. Rhyme every third line with "Fizz" and every fifth line with "Buzz."

splicer 14y ago

If you were hiring an editor, rather than a writer, asking about the Oxford comma is perfectly reasonable.

tocomment 14y ago

I think it would be funny to do one of these for hiring plumbers. And you ask them what toilets they have unclogged outside of work for their own projects. And if they tell you they won't unclog toilets if they don't get paid, you dismiss them for having no passion for their work ...

snitzr 14y ago

I'm an English major and I sweat bullets before I read to the "For the naysayers" part. I wouldn't have gotten past the phone screen.

gisikw 14y ago

Is this not how we hire writers?!