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I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

• columbo 14y ago
  Poor grammar (i wuld leik to apply 4 jorb) is an acceptable thing to use when rejecting a candidate. With that said, I have no interest in a writing career and I'm getting tired of reading about all these new and creative ways to take interviews as far from the subject matter as possible. And finally, anyone who considers their experience set the baseline of which everyone should aspire to isn't someone I would be interested in working for. You're a professional writer. Good for you. I'm not. How about we take your ego out of this process and actually talk about something related to the position.
• macey 14y ago
  anyone else like how the URL is shortened to "i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo"? /12yearsold
• ColinWright 14y ago
  This is the take-away point for me: > Everyone says they're detail-oriented in an > application; I just make my employees prove it. CVs are great, certifications and qualifications are great, but if you claim you can do something, I want to see the evidence. When I'm hiring I want to see that the candidate has * ... thought about what I will want and/or need, * ... makes direct claims that they can provide it/them, and then * ... provides evidence to support their claim(s). All the talk about FizzBuzz, trial runs, grammar Nazis, choice of typography, and every other hiring cargo cult comes down to: Show me you understand the job you're applying for, then provide evidence that you can do it. Evidence that you've even thought about these issues will get you through the door.
  • mgkimsal 14y ago
    "Show me you understand the job you're applying for, then provide evidence that you can do it." In return, I ask that an employer provide some substantive description of what I'll be doing, giving me the opportunity to think about it. Actual job posting I saw recently: ---------------- Requirements: * Object Oriented PHP * Efficient in MySQL * Experience with programming logic, great code writing style * Understanding of HTML * Strong database architecture and implementation skills * Team Leader * Ability to work independently -------------- This tells me pretty much nothing.
    • bru 14y ago
      Actually, I think it does: "You'll be all by yourself on our website/webapp. A designer will deal with the CSS, but all the rest is up to you"
    • GFischer 14y ago
      There's sometimes a huge mismatch between what the employer is asking, and his needs. For example, at my current job we're asking for an expert in HTML5, JQuery, CSS2.1, CSS3, JavaScript, Ajax, Mobile Web Development, Mobile Web Performance, Cross-Browser, Cross-Platform Development; debugging tools (Firebug or equivalent), DOM, Internationalization, Localization, Apache. The truth is, we have one of the ugliest websites, on an awful CMS, and our webpages are on ASP (not .NET, plain old ASP circa 1999) with VBScript hosted on IIS 5. What such a rockstar web developer will be doing here beats me (the company does pay way above average wages locally, but such a developer can work for the US). We've already wasted somebody who was a decent web programmer (he's doing mailing lists for the Marketing department), I guess that the selected applicant will end up doing ASP pages (maybe they'll let him migrate portions of the website very slowly).
    • dsr_ 14y ago
      Many job descriptions are actually a listing of the problems that happened with the last employee. "Efficient in MySQL" = the current SQL queries are not performing well. "great code writing style" = the existing code is unreadable "Understanding of HTML" = they spent more time fixing divs and attributes than writing new code "Strong database architecture and implementation skills" = we can't afford to hire a DBA as well "Team Leader" = there are existing employees who we don't trust in a management role "Ability to work independently" = that last person was always asking questions that could have been Googled
• tokenizer 14y ago
  Is it just me, or is, blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html a bad choice for url on this subject?
  • mapleoin 14y ago
    As a spare-time grammar nazi, I find it quite fitting.
• rheide 14y ago
  I think that's perfectly reasonable. Although I'm not a native speaker I quickly get annoyed at people's inability to form proper sentences. But only in formal situations, such as the job application scenario in the original article. I went to a Barclays bank in the UK the other day to try and open a business account. One of the main reasons I didn't go with them was that the guy who was going to be my 'personal banker' could not spell the words maintenance ('maintainance') and developer ('devloper'). This just makes you seem incredibly unprofessional and unworthy of future dealings.
  • debacle 14y ago
    I don't know, sometimes I misspell maintenance on purpose out of spite for the English language.
    • DannoHung 14y ago
      Really? That's a rather phonetically spelt word, aside from the "s" sound at the end.
      • debacle 14y ago
        But why change the spelling? Maintainance looks much more logically correct.
        • StavrosK 14y ago
          Because that's pronounced "maintain-ance". Stress on the "ain".
          • nirvdrum 14y ago
            That sounds like a regional dialect. I've never heard it pronounced that way in the northeast US at the very least.
            • 14y ago
• espinchi 14y ago
  I do the same: unstructured e-mails, poor grammar and, in general, bad writing style make me reject applicants instantaneously. However, I wonder if I'm letting good candidates go just because of my grammar nazism. How do you (folks in HN with more experience at hiring) feel about this?
  • ctdonath 14y ago
    Would you rather miss hiring a good candidate? or hire a bad one? Easier to recover from the former mistake than the latter.
  • einhverfr 14y ago
    In my view the ability to structure communications is important. I don't think that's the same as being a grammar nazi. For example if you have a zero tolerance policy for it's vs its, or for commas making things confusing, the framers of the US Constitution would fail the test. Not only is 'it's' is used as a possessive but try to parse this: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." Yet I doubt we would doubt the authors' intelligence, creativity, and professionalism. The simple fact is that grammar mistakes and grammar of non-standard dialects is one thing, but an inability to structure an email or other communication is a much bigger deal. You can't fault the guy who learned English as a second language, whose native language has no gendered pronouns and gets confused all the time, and the same goes for non-standard English dialects like AAVE. So that's where I'd draw the line.
    • hkolek 14y ago
      I don't know, I don't think your example sentence is particularly hard to parse, and I'm not a native speaker. But I have to say, even as a non-native speaker, I just can't understand whats hard about "its" and "it's" and "their", "there" and "they're" and it makes me cringe every time to read such mistakes (as does confusing "loose" with "lose"). That said, I don't expect perfection but if I read a text that is littered with such mistakes and makes them consistently I won't read it because, for me, it's arduous to correct all those mistakes in my mind while reading.
• s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument: Poor grammar often is an artifact of a person being inexperienced with reading, writing, or both. Either that or a sign of an unwillingness to learn. Both of these are red flags when hiring. On the other hand, if your "zero tolerance" policy includes things like my usage of an oxford comma, chances are I don't want to work for you.
  • einhverfr 14y ago
    Dude, I so want to go there, apply, and write at the bottom of the page: "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." -- And that's the law of the land. Please try to parse that until your head explodes. Edit: I think I would add to that "Also, in your opinion does this mean that once you have been in the country for 14 years you are no longer eligible to be President?"
    • praptak 14y ago
      Combining "not" with "and" or "or" leads to ambiguity - there are no operator precedence rules in spoken language. I remember a "eating and drinking forbidden in the lab" notice with "not (eat or drink) == not eat or not drink" scribbled underneath (in math notation).
      • einhverfr 14y ago
        Also notice comma placement, which makes the citizenship requirement very interesting to try to parse. Is there anyone alive today who qualifies?
        • excuse-me 14y ago
          Which is why you should avoid commas in legal documents and especially patents
• jorgeleo 14y ago
  So... Yoda and all the internet kitties are out of luck... sad it is; or . , ;; : one of those
• einhverfr 14y ago
  Now I want to know the following: 1) Will he hire people who can't tell active voice from passive? (Check out the Language Log archives for how many grammar and style nazis can't tell the difference.) 2) Does he require that you can tell who and whom apart and use them in their correct cases? If the answer is "yes" to both of these then I would assume that the people who pass the test are English majors with minors in Linguistics ;-)
  • irahul 14y ago
    > If the answer is "yes" to both of these then I would assume that the people who pass the test are English majors with minors in Linguistics ;-) I don't know. I am not a native speaker, and am not an English major, but the answer is "yes" to both of them. Am I understanding you correctly that you are saying people can't make out active and passive between "I wrote a letter", "A letter was written by me"? "Who" and "whom" is a bit tricky, but I follow the rule about "who -> he"(who broke the vase? he did), "whom -> him"(whom do you trust? him). There might be edge cases I am unaware of.
    • einhverfr 14y ago
      First, "whom" today is more or less reserved for formulaic usage. You write "To whom it may concern," but you don't say "Whom did you meet yesterday?" If you start rigidly using whom as objective (a use that Sapir noted was dying in 1912), you sound stilted and put people off. It's the sort of grammar nazi thing that alienates customers. Similarly passive voice, split infinitives, etc. all sound like great rules until you realize that there are plenty of cases where these so-called rules are actually good to break. For example, perhaps his productivity would more than double if he would stop worrying about whether his employees split their infinitives.
    • bane 14y ago
      "Whom" is also almost impossibly archaic and no longer considered part of modern English (having almost completely fallen out of usage around the start of the 20th century). It survives almost entirely in discussions of when to use it and almost never appears in modern writing except as a demonstration of what linguists call a "prestige form". "To whom did you give it?" vs. "Who did you give it to?" the latter is more modern and natural in modern English.
• scottcanoni 14y ago
  LOL... "I won't hire people who use POO" Best URL truncation from a serious topic, EVER.
• hkolek 14y ago
  I agree. I think Eric S. Raymond nails it: "While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong — and we have no use for sloppy thinkers." http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
  • kahawe 14y ago
    The 90s are unfortunately long gone but the one good thing about this is that we could finally just NOT give ESR and his populism any more attention...
    • amackera 14y ago
      Could you expand a bit on this? I've read his Cathedral and Bazaar book, and quite enjoyed it. I didn't realize there was a whole context that I should be aware of.
      • StavrosK 14y ago
        I would also like this explained. I know very little about who ESR is.
        • pja 14y ago
          He was a "big deal" in the 90s, at least within hacker circles: wrote a lot of early free software / hacker culture reated stuff & was heavily involved in the rebranding of "free software" into a form that corporate suits could feel comfortable with ("open source") & selling that idea to a wider audience. See 'The Cathedral & the Bazaar' and other works. He wasn't all talk: way back in the day, he worked on emacs & authored fetchmail (fair warning: reading the fetchmail source will make your ears bleed.) More on his wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond
        • excuse-me 14y ago
          ESR was an evil prophet of the dark god Cthullu. Reading sendmail configs out-loud are believed to summon the evil one and bring about his reign of terror. So fetchmail is the equivalent of an evil prayer wheel
• cafard 14y ago
  "And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil's in the details." A grouchy pedant might remark that this parses as "When good writing and good grammar come to programming, they are in the details; so also is the devil when it comes to programming." I would not hire somebody who writes badly to be a technical writer, or to do any worth that requires a lot of writing. However, I have worked with a number of persons who did not write well but were very effective at complicated work. [edit: for 'worth' read 'work']
• maxer 14y ago
  i wont read an article about people who use poo blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html
• timepilot 14y ago
  I'm guessing he isn't a big Steve Jobs fan.
• irahul 14y ago
  My train of thoughts: > Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Whoa. Who do you think you are - google? What makes you think I am going to sit through your grammar test? If I am agreeing to your grammar test, either you are one of the most desirable places to work for(never heard of you), or economy is about to collapse and this is the only job I can find, or I am so incompetent and/or desperate that I will take anything that comes my way(beggars, choosers etc). > Of course, we write for a living. Oh, should have mentioned it earlier. I won't have gone into internal monologue. > But grammar is relevant for all companies. May be it is. But not as relevant as you make out to be. > In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. Apart from my words, I have my intent, thoughts, opinions, facts. Words are a medium. You are giving them undue importance. If I am reading an article about face recognition using opencv, I am interested in code snippets and concepts. My mind auto-correct "there, their, they're" or "its, it's". If I am reading about "infant mortality rate in India", I am interested in figures, reasons, solutions. That is not to say grammar or writing style doesn't matter. I am saying it's not as important as you put it to be, and good writing doesn't automatically come with proper grammar. > If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with. You are assuming someone good at something is assigning equal amount of weight and is equally interested in grammar as he is in whatever he is good at. I know good programmers who write weird English. Anecdote, data etc. Neither of us have data, anecdotes don't count for much. > So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write. Don't worry about it. To pass on a great programmer, you will have to get them interested in you first. It's a win-win situation. They aren't going to flock to your offices to take your grammar test, and you won't have to pass on great programmers due to bad grammar. > Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts. Citations please. Also, unless you are stocking shelves, how does it matter? Never came across a programmer whose desk is always messy(I never came across one whose desk is clean)? > In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code. Citation please. And how do you know it's not the other way round? > And I guarantee that even if other companies aren't issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés. After all, sloppy is as sloppy does. I am all for proof reading resumes and cover letters, but "sloppy is as sloppy does" assumes someone who is sloppy at something is sloppy at everything. That's as far from the truth as it can be. > Grammar is my litmus test. You must be fun to work with. A CEO whose litmus test to hir a programmer isn't programming finesse or cultural fit or drive..., but how good is his grammar.
• drx 14y ago
  I will. I don't give a shit about someone's grammar if they're good at what they do.
  • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    If they're good at what they do and not an imbecile then couldn't you give them a lesson or two in grammar. I was never taught English grammar at school - French and Russian grammar but no English grammar beyond learning a poem about it at primary school. I was educated in England, English is my first language.
    • UK-AL 14y ago
      How can you never be taught grammar? There are two English gcses, English language and English Lit. One is about the technicalities of the language, the other about literature. Everyone has to do English Language....
      • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
        There are indeed two GCSEs but crucially we had only one type of English lesson. We studied literature, poetry, wrote stories and poems of our own; did presentations, read plays, memorised Shakespearean monologues and such. But, barring that one poem in primary school I was never taught what an adverb is for example. In French we'd look at past-participles and different tenses but never was it discussed what the pluperfect or future perfect was in English. In Russian we looked at locative and genitive, accusative and nominative cases (and others I'm sure) but in English there was never once a mention that anything such as a grammatical case existed. In school there was never a lesson on the apostrophe - reading Truss's tome [Eats, Shoots & Leaves] recently made me wonder why on Earth I couldn't have been passed something like that as a kid (I was a quite avid reader for many years but alas of course it wasn't written until 2006). We did look at literary terms like onomatopoeia, alliteration, spoonerism and related concepts - metaphor, rhyming and timbre - that allow for analysis of poetry and prose. Our English language classes, and exam incidentally, were about English usage and not really the language itself - the construction of language using English as the subject. Grammar was just not in vogue at the time I feel. I've always felt however that being taught English grammar would have helped foreign language learning immeasurably. FWIW I got high marks in both English exams (though I felt I was robbed by my teacher confusing me with the boy I sat next to!).
• awestley 14y ago
  I think that ain't no fiar!
• mkup 14y ago
  Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance." She thinks that people who mix up their itses "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave," while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are otherwise qualified for the position. Putting comma inside quotation like the above could make grammar nazis happy, but when your newly hired programmer treats all algebraic operations as commutative, it will do no good to your company. Code is not a prose, and coders are not writers.
  • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    I've never understood this putting punctuation that isn't part of a quote inside the quotation marks. It seems both wrong in terms of verity and in terms of logically constructing prose. Can someone explain a rationale for this proclivity ?
    • AkThhhpppt 14y ago
      Because that's How It's Done. Programmers are almost the only people who routinely break it - because we're used to quoted strings being atomic units.
      • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
        So there's no rationale beyond convention? Other linguistic conventions get changed so why is this one sticking around and why do its supporters promote it - is the more logical [to me] method somehow confusing?
        • adavies42 14y ago
          it's old printers' stuff to do with physical properties of lead type, i think. as to why it won't go away, i have no idea. i happily ignore it in almost all my writing....
          • AkThhhpppt 14y ago
• adv0r 14y ago
  What it they are foreigners?
  • sebnukem2 14y ago
    As a foreigner, I can try to answer that. I've noticed that in general foreigners have a much better grammar than English native speakers because we (at least in my case) went through boring English classes. Learning English was a conscious effort and every grammar rule had to be learned and understood. Reading English also requires a conscious effort, and reading poorly written English requires an even greater effort to parse the bad and incorrect clauses, something a native English speaker doesn't have to do.
    • queensnake 14y ago
      > I've noticed that in general foreigners have a much better grammar than English native speakers I have to disagree strongly - not my experience at all, with Indians, Chinese, Germans, Spaniards, Belorussians.. One exception, a Greek who could kick my verbal ass. But, of course, native speakers have the huge advantage of proper use being just intuitive but, still, you made an absolute statement. You may be interested to know that when a conquered people adopts the conquerors' language, they take on the vocabulary but much of the grammar of the old language remains. I read an interesting paper about some grammatical trick you could do in Germanic languages, but not in English. Why? Maybe because, in this way, Celtic was shining through? No, non-British-aisles Celtic has the same trick. The paper speculated that it was a remnant of the grammar of pre-Celtic, pre-historic Briton. (Just to illustrate how hard it is to adopt a new grammar.) Also, note, general foreigner, it's 'much better grammar' not '/a/ much better grammar'.
• snorkel 14y ago
  Yes, technical writers are required to use proper grammar. Why is that controversial? I do find it ironic that his prose has commas in places where most people would not put a comma, and his placement is probably correct, but still somewhat less readable.
• impendia 14y ago
  Along these lines, let me ask advice from HN. I am buying a home in need of some repairs, and my real estate agent recommended a contractor whom he has personally used a lot. The contractor inspected the home and prepared a competitively priced five-figure estimate. From his estimate: "These conditions, if left to deteriate [sic] further, will make the building unsafe. ... The following recommended work is described by catagory [sic]: ... All leaks, disfunctional [sic] faucets & fixtures will be repaired or replaced." It goes on. I'm shocked a professional would write something like this, especially since it is a MS Word document and so all the misspelled words are conveniently underlined in red. But my real estate agent thinks I'm making a big deal out of nothing. Anyone have thoughts, experience, opinions, advice?
  • irahul 14y ago
    > But my real estate agent thinks I'm making a big deal out of nothing. Anyone have thoughts, experience, opinions, advice? If you (trust|know|have worked with) your real estate agent, and he is vouching for the bag grammar and spelling guy, how does the bad grammar and spelling matter?
  • evilbit 14y ago
    I think linguistic skills of someone who saws pieces of wood for a living are less relevant than for someone who conjures up high abstract concepts and communicates them to man and machine alike.
  • allwein 14y ago
    I think you're making a big deal out of nothing. You're hiring this guy because of his proficiency in using his tools: saws, hammers, wood, nails, construction knowledge, etc. It seems silly then to dismiss him because of his lack of proficiency in tertiary tools: words, word processing software, etc.
  • nollidge 14y ago
    Here is where I part from the OP. I do think of programming as a form of writing, and so I think it's OK to judge a programmer thusly, but I don't think it's got much to do with stocking shelves or plumbing or carpentry. Moreover, based on your snippets that contractor has trouble with spelling errors, not grammar, which in my opinion is a different sort of skill altogether. Also I would not be surprised if he/she is dyslexic or similar.
• damian2000 14y ago
  Some advice - just because you happen to like perfect grammar, don't enforce your preference on others. Some of the best devs I've ever worked with have poor grammar, but it has never stopped them from making huge contributions to the team.
• benihana 14y ago
  Oh please. I can understand not hiring someone who communicates poorly. That makes sense. But grammar is just a set of arbitrary rules that some person or group of people decided were correct. It's like a secret handshake that lets people know you're part of some smart boys club (by and large it seems like men are the only ones who enjoy bitching about grammar). To me, it says, "I went to a good school system and was taught correctly!" Sure, I get a little anxious when people misuse your/you're. But to think it's an early indicator of success is at best limiting yourself to missing out on talent, and at worse surrounding yourself with likeminded pedantic grammar nazis who care about unimportant things. In my time as a software developer, I've met a lot of people who got angsty about grammar who weren't very inspiring programmers. I've met more people who couldn't figure out their and there or you're and your to save their lives who were both fantastically good software engineers and effective communicators. Lets keep a little perspective here: The goal of hiring isn't to find someone who's not going to annoy you by misusing grammar in emails. It's to find someone who's going to help you accomplish your goals. I get that details are important for your company. I just don't agree that knowing grammar rules indicates an attention to the proper details.
  • allwein 14y ago
    In general job X, that may be true. But when you're being hired at a company where your job is going to explicitly be writing clear technical prose, I don't think it's unimportant at all.
    • UK-AlasGou 14y ago
      But he stated it should be recommended for most companies too.
    • alayne 14y ago
      "Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff, and our programmers."
      • snowwrestler 14y ago
• ericmoritz 14y ago
  I freaked out at first. I couldn't believe that they were criticizing developers for poor grammar. As I read on, I realized that they make a living on the written word and it all made sense.
• exDM69 14y ago
  This practically excludes everyone who doesn't speak English as their native language. Depending on what business he's into this can be a serious handicap for recruitment.
  • excuse-me 14y ago
    No he says specifically that this doesn't apply to ESL or dyslexics. As a writer he is objecting to hiring people who don't care enough about writing to use grammar correctly and he believes that this also strongly correlates with being a good programmer.
• UK-AlasGou 14y ago
  Grammar can often be so complex, that you can get experts who disagree with each other.
  • rytis 14y ago
    Grammar is a set of agreed rules, therefore it is not set in stone. Someone might disagree with the rules, and that leads to a slightly different grammar. And so on and so forth. Effectively, everyone has their 'own' grammar that they use. IMHO (especially not being a native English speaker) this article is rubbish (it's in URL BTW). One needs to know his grammar to write articles, but for a developer position? Don't think so.
• kapupetri 14y ago
  I wouldn't hire people who's eyes point to different directions.
• DrJokepu 14y ago
  When I screen, interview and hire people, I look for reasons to hire someone as opposed to trying to find reasons to disqualify people. This kind of negative approach (especially when dealing with people) is just not a good way to go about things in my opinion and experience.
  • pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    I'm sure you do both. Why would you ignore negatives? Like "this guys skillset is great so were going to ignore that he was fired from his last job for laziness and that all his department left because of his sociopathic behaviour". Seriously?
• baak 14y ago
  You could write a similar article about why you only hire people who eat with their elbows off the table, and it would probably be just as meaningful. I agree that the basics are important, but I disagree that it matters to the extent you're suggesting.
• raganwald 14y ago
  Applicants who don't think writing is important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren't important, "Citation needed." Or to put it another way, what is the difference between this statement and: Applicants who don't think wearing a tie and polished brogues to an interview are important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren't important
  • ianterrell 14y ago
    The difference between those two cases is well explained by the internal logic of the article (which I find spot on): > In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence.
    • raganwald 14y ago
      I agree with the statement you quoted I don’t agree with the statement I quoted. I have no difficulty agreeing with him on one point but taking him to task on another.
    • kamaal 14y ago
      You could say the same thing about how a person presents himself. If a person can't present himself well in an interview, what guarantees do we have he would do it well in a client/investor meeting?
• samwillis 14y ago
  > Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, .... I'm Dyslexic and if I was applying for a job (obviously not to be a writer) and was told that there was a grammar test but I didn't need to take it, or it didn't count, because I am Dyslexic I would probably walk away. How do I know that they aren't going to hold my Dyslexia against me just as they would someone who has bad grammar? What's the difference between bad grammar and Dyslexia (obviously I know the difference ) the person you tested may have never been diagnosed with Dyslexia.
  • gawker 14y ago
    We will probably never know if anyone is really holding something against us. Sure, someone could tell you but others might choose not to disclose that information. We just go with trust and gut :)
• fingerprinter 14y ago
  To everyone saying it isn't fair...it's fair. I mean, they are his companies. Stupid, incredibly shortsighted and very draconian, but fair.
• crazygringo 14y ago
  As long as it's a reasonable test, you can argue its merits. But on a site of mine, I've gotten so many e-mails complaining that I say "the data is" instead of "the data are", or arguing that either "what year were you born in" or "in what year were you born" or "what year were you born" are variously wrong, and only one is right (but they all seem to disagree on which one). Beyond a certain point necessary for clear communication, one person's proper grammar is another's irritating pedantry.
  • nollidge 14y ago
    Most people don't know where the dividing lines are between grammar, spelling, writing style, and typographic style. Cf. several posts on this very thread.
  • kwiens 14y ago
    The test covers a variety of topics, and you don't need to get anywhere close to a perfect score. And it really covers the basics: misspellings, usage of to vs two, etc. This is about basic communication, not pedantry.
• FlyingSnake 14y ago
  If he's talking about general grammar skills in any language then it makes sense. Poor grammar always stands out as a negative trait, but should not be the sole criteria to hire. Some of the best developers are immigrants and not always have the best command over the native language. What if iFixit/Dozuki decides to expand into Germany or Japan and the OP fails on the basic level of grammar there? Will he be consider himself a sub par resource?
• tokenadult 14y ago
  Once again here on Hacker News we are talking about hiring procedures for technical companies. Many people find this topic interesting, because most of us have applied for a job at least once, and many of us have been in a position to recommend someone else for a job, or to hire someone for a job. From participants in earlier discussions I have learned about many useful references on the subject, which I have 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, personality tests, and so on. There is much published study research on how job applicants perform after they are hired in a wide variety of occupations. http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes... EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: If you are hiring for any kind of job in the United States, prefer a work-sample test as your hiring procedure. If you are hiring in most other parts of the world, use a work-sample test in combination with a general mental ability test. The overall summary of the industrial psychology research in reliable secondary sources is that two kinds of job screening procedures work reasonably well. 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. (But the calculated validity of each of the two best kinds of procedures, standing alone is only 0.54 for work sample tests and 0.51 for general mental ability tests.) 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 risky 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 a general intelligence test 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)." Integrity tests have limited validity standing alone, but appear to have significant incremental validity when added to a general mental ability test or work-sample test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1 http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&JScript=1 http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports... Bottom line: if someone is hiring for a company that produces technical documentation, a company like iFixit.com, and one feature of the product is grammatically correct writing, it's a reasonable subpart of a work-sample test to include testing for revising English prose. If someone is hiring for managing a jewelry store (a local example I know) or for building wood-frame houses, it's quite possible that a work-sample test would completely disregard the issue of correct spelling and grammar. I know a very successful owner of a jewelry store (I know him as a fellow soccer dad who once coached one of my children) who has quite dodgy spelling and grammar and punctuation, but who can communicate in written English for emailing people. I'm aware of multiple local carpenters and other people in construction businesses, including managing construction businesses, who have varying degrees of punctilious correctness in English writing, but all of them making their reputations and their livings by how they construct buildings, not by how they construct sentences. If writing is part of the work (even just for exchanging ideas with colleagues in memos or emails), sure, test it. If writing is not particularly part of the work, don't worry about it.
• nihilocrat 14y ago
  If they did that here, we'd need to find a new CEO... but the programmers would be in good shape.
• madink 14y ago
  It's funny , I am a native french speaker married to an australian so my english start to be quit all right. What is funny is that "there, their, they're" or "its, it's" mistakes are painful to me, but at the same time I am unable to write 3 sentences in french whith no mistake. I probably made a few mistake in this post but remember english is EASY (at least from a european background). I am ashamed of my own french writting , I tried (not to hard) to fix it with very limited success , when I what kind of easy stupid common English mistake I'm really torn between empathy and disgusts.
• mej10 14y ago
  Caring about grammar is just a way to signal that you are of higher class than people that use poor grammar.
• Spearchucker 14y ago
  Even if this ensures a cultural fit I'd not be so binary about grammar. Just a few months ago I helped a government department find an architect. The brief boiled down to someone who can code, but can also liaise with department directors and its vendors, up to CxO level. Clearly grammar and communication ability in general was quite a key requirement. The recruitment process involved submitting a resume and answering standard questions in an application form. There was a deadline beyond which applications wouldn't be considered. Of all the resumes I reviewed one stood out. For two reasons. First, his technical ability, if the resume was to be believed, was impressive. More than a government department could hope for. The second reason was that his answers in the application form tanked. The very first paragraph answer simply stopped in mid-sentence. There were a number of spelling mistakes in the remaining answers. I really liked the resume, so I invited him in for an interview anyway. Turns out he is in fact as good as his resume suggested. The reason for the sloppy application form was that he only spotted the job advertisement at 4pm the day of the application deadline, and had to hustle to get his application in before 5pm. He'd heard about the project and was desperate to be a part of it. He's been one of the best hires I've made. Being fanatically dogmatic about anything in life closes doors you'd never have imagined were even there. I hope I never become that myopic.
  • kwiens 14y ago
    I've hired last minute applicants, too, so I understand where you're coming from. We are very happy to make exceptions to the policy in situations like that. We've hired dyslexic people who have worked out brilliantly. Candidates that don't speak English natively are another exception. We try hard to hire people that can speak multiple languages. (I have found that learning a second language usually makes people better at English grammar.) We don't expect a perfect score on our grammar test, and that test is one of many deciding factors in our hiring process. Just as we test programming candidates for programming competence, we also test them for writing skills. If you can't FizzBuzz, we're not hiring you. If you can't complete a sentence, we're not hiring you. Beyond that, we use a lot of discretion.
• kahawe 14y ago
  For me this comes down to the HR dilemma and why I feel sympathy for the dreaded HR drones and in this case for him having to make HR decisions: They are people responsible for making decisions about applicants they practically know nothing about based on nothing but a bit of self-presentation and ultimately they are in trouble when that applicant turns out to have been the wrong choice, so no wonder they turn to obscure "voodoo" and "dark magic" as sure-fire ways of weeding out allegedly "bad" applicants... in this case instead of a crystal ball he uses a grammar test to make decisions about, amongst others, staffing technical and engineering positions. I am sure a lot of excellent programmers and engineers aren't necessarily the best with words and you have no idea how well they might do by requiring them to pass a grammar test as the bare minimum. You might just as well ask them to paint you a few pictures and then derive conclusions about their mental abilities to picture things and software framework... while there could be correlations, it just has nothing to do with their job and the rest of their skills. Here is an idea for hiring people and to end this strange fascination that comes with it: building on a core team of excellent people and a good, existing culture you then bring in people mainly through references. I saw this work especially well when bringing in students but it applies to former colleagues as well; they know who the good and the go-to people amongst their colleagues are/were and the good people know it more than anyone else. And they also know the person from working with them so chances are the applicant will be a great fit for the existing team. As an alternative you could let your people teach some classes or give trainings and they will very quickly know who the good students are. Then just hire the applicant and give them a realistic chance to prove themselves in a project. Chances are very good that within a few months or even weeks it will become very clear whether they are a good fit or not. Bad people WILL dis-qualify and alienate themselves, in any healthy organization you can trust on that and if you don't have any good people at all well then your whole hiring-voodoo is pointless anyway because the best new hire will drown in your swamp. I have seen this work like a charm at my last employer - I was brought in by my Linux teacher who was working there and I went for a beer with the guys, I liked the atmosphere and the people and they could get to know me too and then I showed up to the interview with the CEO in a very relaxed environment and it was pretty clear they want me so we just discussed details and that was it. Efforts on their part were zero and on my part a mild hang-over after a great evening and no stupid self-presentation and applying shenanigans. I have seen people come and go at that place for a few years and without a fail the ones that left were a bad match or just bad employees. The good ones stuck around and I am best friends with all of them, even to this day more than three years after the place went belly-up and I moved to a different country. At that time each one of them found a new job very quickly and a lot of former customers continued to bring them business just because the people were so good and reliable. Each time we get together twice a year now that "old spirit" flares up again and we feel just like in the "good old days". This is also the best network you could ask for, it "grew naturally", if you will. Hire through references and give people a realistic chance and be smart about managing your expenses, side-effects and repercussions from doing so. I can not see how this is not way more efficient and more reliable than the whole bloated fortune-telling HR mumbo-jumbo.
• cgmorton 14y ago
  Everyone who is getting angry, listen: This isn't a test for suitability for the position. It's a matter of signalling. This is a cheap test (surely can't take more than 5 minutes to complete a grammar test), but with the property that the only candidates who will -fail- it are candidates unsuitable for hiring. Since the author gives no statistics, we can only assume that enough people are weeded out to make it worthwhile. It's much the same as a FizzBuzz test. I certainly don't feel offended if I'm given such a test at an interview, I just smile and do it.
• Zenst 14y ago
  He may only hire people who can do grammer, but can they recite PI to 27 places, I think now. He is a word racist as I call them. His loss.
• hythloday 14y ago
  Just to illustrate what a morass "poor grammar" is, I have, wearing my ex-professional proofreader hat, gone through the article to highlight the areas where I could find fault with the article for incorrect usage. People Who Use Poor Grammar should be: People Who Use Grammar Poorly. I have a "zero tolerance approach" should be: I have a zero-tolerance approach. people who mix up their itses should be: people who mix up its and it's. passed over for a job — even if should be: passed over for a job—even if. I don't point this out to be pedantic or to level at the author a tu quoque, but to point out that the idea of an "English grammar" that you can apply universally to writing is a myth. At best you can create a style guide, or follow an existing one. Expecting employees to be able to follow a known style guide is a reasonable request. Expecting them to score perfectly on a grammar test against a style guide they've never seen, without (presumably) computer assistance, when scored by someone who believes that they're capable of scoring a grammar test without recourse to existing style guides, is foolish, in exactly the same way that expecting a programmer to remember whether String.find take (needle, haystack) or (haystack, needle) as its arguments is a terrible interview technique.
  • binxbolling 14y ago
    Oh, wow, someone nitpicking this guy's grammar — never saw that coming. What an unhelpful, predictable comment. FWIW, I don't believe the author was talking about style guides at all anyway. Rather, he seems to be discussing general and very basic principles of English.
    • hythloday 14y ago
      Very basic in whose judgement? If it's the author's (and presumably yours), fine, but then it's not a business case, it's a shibboleth. If you're agreeing with the author's claim that there is a "silent majority" (which I always find a dubious argument) of people who have their confidence in your business impacted, then you're far better off investing in a process that catches these errors--many of which can be caused by typos, rather than ignorance--before they are seen, rather than relying on an up-front test that's never retaken. Someone else on this thread made an analogy to push-ups. If, as a business owner, you feel that it's essential for your business that any employee can perform 20 push-ups at any time, is it better to test them before they begin employment, or to put them on a brief training course when they join and have regular check-ups on their ability?
• Hari_Seldon 14y ago
  why do people write "noone" when they mean "no one"? it is very annoying
• sebnukem2 14y ago
  Finally, a paper and post I can link to when people ask me why using it's in place of its or vice versa makes me angry.
• linuxhansl 14y ago
  Wow, what a load of nonsense. Some of smartest people I know are dyslexic. I guess they won't be working at any of his companies.
• lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Dear Mr. von Neumann: With the greatest sorrow I have learned of your illness. The news came to me as quite unexpected. Morgenstern already last summer told me of a bout of weakness you once had I am pretty sure that "already last summer" is poor English grammar. Tisk - this Godel character. Probably not worth a face to face. http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/the-gdel-letter/ http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/the-gdel-letter/
  • gjm11 14y ago
    From the original article: > [...] Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.) [...] Kurt Goedel wasn't a native English speaker; he was from Austria. I think that would count as an extenuating circumstance.
• leephillips 14y ago
  I like how he ended a sentence with "with", and made that "with" a link to a note debunking the popular but silly belief that you should not end a sentence with a preposition. That was both clever and shows that he knows what he's talking about.
• kamaal 14y ago
  Ah! The Irony. These days programmers don't want to be bothered about the language syntax they use and heavily depend of autocomplete and intellisense to do even simple tasks. While its this grammar that they should be actually learning and mastering. Yet this isn't even the criteria for hiring programmers these days. And by the way where does this stop. I can argue physical fitness is important for programmer so can I ask you to sprint a 1000m track as a part of my interview process?
  • cafard 14y ago
    If you can find someone who can sprint 1000 meters, you have a real beast on your hands.
• pteromyscus 14y ago
  Too bad, Yoda could be a killer programmer.
• isalmon 14y ago
  Well, "smart" way to discriminate against immigrants :(
• degenerate 14y ago
  The "canonical" URL for this article is quite hilarious, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way based on the article: i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html
• ricardonunez 14y ago
  My mother thong is Spanish, I also know English, Portuguese and some Italian. I'm not a good in either language. In the last few years I put a lot of time in getting better at English. By reading that post and some comments you will assume I don't read, I'm lazy, slow learner, sloppy and unmotivated. Proper grammar is important, but I'll not make it a priority while looking for talent.
  • adavies42 14y ago
    no, just illiterate. the original author and the commenters here all made allowances for non-native speakers of english, which apparently you couldn't be bothered to read....
    • ricardonunez 14y ago
      My bad, I apologize. I still think I'll not use grammar as a very important issue (at least for some positions) while hiring.
  • excuse-me 14y ago
    It should be "your mother's thong is Spanish" However in the USA it's unusual to take the provenance of parental lingerie into account in the hiring process.
    • ricardonunez 14y ago
      Thank you for the correction.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• Produce 14y ago
  The URL: i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html I wouldn't hire someone who does anything with poo but dump it too.
• mjwalshe 14y ago
  Thats ok I would not hire progamers who went to special needs schools like the Harvard MBA program. BTW any MBA's you do know the people in the hard courses at your elite university regard you as second class?
• l3amm 14y ago
  The comments have become a firestorm of grammar-as-a-filter for programmers. While this is an interesting debate, I think there are three things about this filter that give it value: 1) Grammar serves as a cultural touchstone in the company, so using a grammar test in hiring is a strong signal to employees and future employees about what we as a company stand for. If you apply to this job and you disregard grammar freely (guilty as charged) you will not fit into this organization. It's a fast filter on both ends: I won't take the test, and if I did you would reject me immediately. Excellent. 2) It is a binary, non-complex test. You write the test once and there is a unambiguous right and wrong answer, if you get the questions right you pass, if you don't you are rejected. This has several benefits: Applicants: They know this is coming and can prepare/not prepare for it. The test is objective, so they can't really argue with its validity. At one point they probably knew this material, meaning that an hour of time to prepare for the finer points of colons/semi-colons is probably doable if they really want the job. Employer: Since the answers are unambiguous this filter is easy to use: passed candidates go through. There is no subjectivity around assessing a candidate using a resume or cover letter. In my experience (CEO in hiring efficiency space) this easily-actionable filter means that the task at hand will actually get done. If you watch recruiters try to parse through 200+ resumes against a job req, they will stop after 10-15. They might come back to it on another day, or they might not. Either way the applicant pipeline stops dead on their desk. It's frustrating for the recruiter because the task becomes "analyze this free-text against a free-text requisition and then filter this list of 200 people down to 20." The reality of this situation is that most resumes don't get read and the person who ends up getting the job is one of the first 20 that were read. Obviously this situation is non-ideal, so I generally advocate an objective, simple filter as the first step to any process (before looking at resume.) Internal recruiters, in their heart of hearts, want to find the best applicant in the bunch, if you don't give them the tools to do their job then they won't. 3) They've thought about their process and institutionalized it. When I see a company that has thought seriously about the filter stage of the process then I know: a) they care about their employees' time b) they care about quality applicant's and the culture they project in the hiring process c) they have probably thought about all stages of the hiring process so things are likely to move quickly and smoothly.
  • re 14y ago
• EternalFury 14y ago
  Bravo! Poor grammar is the telltale sign of other impediments that hinder the practice of any activity that requires good attention to details.
• SjuulJanssen 14y ago
  Nice drama title. Of course the drama tanks when the reader finds out that it's for a job where people write for a living. That's like asking a programmer to do some coding in the interview. Which is, IMO, not weird at all and rather something everyone should consider.
• AYBABTME 14y ago
  I wish I had a personal grammar nazi who'd poke me everytime I make a mistake in English. Unfortunately, I don't have such an individual, so I'm left with myself and my doubts. I have to balance between near-perfecting English as my second language, or learning and concentrating on stuff that is relevant to my domain. Although I am a perfectionist, I also am a realist and consider that there are, in the end, things more important to my life than writing perfect English. Perfect English will not help me building all the great projects I have in mind.
• yelloblac 14y ago
  This kind of outlook and having a grammar test doesn't make me think that you'd be a great boss to work with, nor does it make me want to work for you. I may not be the cultural fit you're looking for, but undoubtedly you're shrinking your potential talent pool and removing exceptional candidates by just sounding like a stiff and non-flexible place to work, as a programmer.
• larrys 14y ago
  " I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts." I take issue with this. Assuming you could, assuming they were available to work because they couldn't find any other job, would you hire a Rhodes Scholar? If you are hiring for a blue collar type position like "stocking shelves" you want someone who is qualified enough and happy to be in that job and planning to stay at that job. Not thinking it's an interim job until they find something better. A person who is academic enough to have perfect english many times will be an under achiever who might have issues and that is why they are only "stocking shelves". There is a reason why companies often say "you are over qualified for the job" as a reason someone isn't hired. The job has to fit the person roughly. As an aside the OP didn't exactly define what is meant by "poor grammar" or place any links to the "mandatory grammar test" so readers can even decide for themselves.
• melissajenna 14y ago
  As an interviewee, the grammar test reinforced my confidence that iFixit was the right fit for me. I don't want to work with leadership that doesn't "put their money where their mouth is." I love that Kyle is uncompromising in this regard, as it sets the bar high, and we all continue to strive for excellence.
• trustfundbaby 14y ago
  I see where the OP is coming from but this is the kind of mindset that could ensure you miss out on brilliant technical hires. I have a co-worker who only started learning English 15 years ago ... he speaks very good English, but every now and then he'll make written grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Brilliant developer. I'm a bit OCD about grammar myself and am definitely partial to people who are excellent writers and speakers of English, but I think making an allowance for non-native English speakers could a. help increase the diversity of people and ideas in your workplace b. make sure you don't miss out otherwise fantastic hires
• derleth 14y ago
  The problem is that most people who rail against poor grammar haven't the slightest clue what grammar actually entails, and are instead peeving on stylistic issues that vary both due to the region the applicant hails from and how old the applicant is. In a lot of cases, they may as well be basing a hiring decision on whether the applicant says 'bubbler' instead of 'water fountain' or 'pop' instead of 'soda'.
• lukejduncan 14y ago
  Personally, I've found my grammar degrades after a day of coding. I can write well formed sentences in general, but by the end of the day my mind is working in a much different day and my emails drift towards an embarrassing place. I don't think there's anything wrong with having your own particular standards for hiring. If it works for you in solving your particular problem: great! One of the things I began to appreciate when I first starting interviewing in the Valley is how much companies did or didn't care about nuance in their interviews. If the interview was too easy, it generally signaled to me that they don't sweat the details and maybe don't hire people that are going to stretch me professionally.
• gciii 14y ago
  I interviewed at iFixit, and I took the grammar test. iFixit is a great company with a solid mission, and a reasonable grammar test considering the nature of the company. It was a local radio interview a few years ago featuring Mr. Wiens which reignited my ambition to move out of the manufacturing/shipping sector by learning to code. I am still learning to code, and still have a long way to go before I'm ready to earn a paycheck doing so. However, I applied for a position I was well qualified for in the ifixit shipping department in hopes of further immersing myself in the 'culture'. I traveled six hours by train for the interview. I was left scratching my head when only a few minutes of the lengthy interview centered on my relevant experience, or the requirements of the shipping position. A far larger segment of time was spent on grammar tests and logic puzzles (and no, they were not sku, or 'shipping' themed puzzles). I think the key to success with novel interview tests is to make sure you are filtering for the correct result. You don't want to inadvertently filter out highly motivated individuals. Overall, the interview was a good experience, and probably results in the hiring of great gearheads & coders.
• scott_meade 14y ago
  My current grammar peeve is when people end a question with "... or no?" "Are you coming over tonight, or no?" "Do you like this outfit, or no?" "Do I sound like a teenager, or no?" What's up with that?! Do any of you find yourselves talking like that, or no?
• Torgo 14y ago
  I will not hire people who use contractions.
• ericturri 14y ago
  Not totally related, but I found it ironic that the URL for this article is "I won't hire people who use poo" http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_p...
• Tycho 14y ago
  On the flip side, I'm suspicious of people who immediately comment on typos and grammatical mistakes when they read something. Usually I don't even register such mistakes, my brain must just automatically make sense of the text. People who notice small mistakes that don't hamper the actual meaning/communication at hand - I wonder if they are really thinking about the meaning much at all, or just focussing on superficial details.
• antidoh 14y ago
  "And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're." I used to make that judgment. I've since been humbled by many brilliant people who commit that and other common errors. I would be poorer, possibly impoverished, if I had dismissed those people from my circle. As Peopleware pointed out many years ago, most people have something important to contribute, even if they don't contribute much in one specific area.
• mcgwiz 14y ago
  Teams that lack the element of craftsmanship in their culture will likely not care if a programmer knows grammatical rules of natural language (much less if he is a master of natural language). To simplify, whether you agree with the author correlates with what type of programmer you are (or want to hire). In this simplification, I'll call them "productive programmers" and "craftsmen programmers". Productive programmers ship lots code, create lots of value, and by business standards are model programmers. They're driven by quantity, volume, getting things out the door, and the solvency of the business. Craftsmen programmers also "produce" and ship code, but they equally value maintainability, and therefore clarity in code. They're driven by the customer as much as the other consumer of their code, the maintainers. From my experience, these very different types of programmers have very different priorities and values. Generally, the first set emphasizes clarity in communication only as it impedes progress along the critical path. They JIT there eloquence, whether it's essential business communication or unstable/volatile/certain-to-change code. JITing is hard and not guaranteed to produce the optimal (most clear) output. The second group feels obligated to be clear in communication at all time, because any corners cut now may create pain for a fellow down the road. To excel at this, the second group is self-motivated to learn deeply both the spirit and the mechanics of communication (empathy and grammar). They spend more time analyzing the available solutions for potential misinterpretations, and therefore generally produce a clearer output. Thus, the applicability of the article depends on the culture and environment of the team.