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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

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
    Grammar is probably more important for sales than it is for developers. I get a few sales pitches and tend to dump the ones with poor grammar. I feel like: if they can't bother to send a clean pitch, how well are they going to manage my account?
nollidge 14y ago
> But grammar is just a set of arbitrary rules that some person or group of people decided were correct. That's like saying the evolutionary tree of life is just a set of arbitrary rules someone came up with. It's not, it's a description of an existing evolved system. Grammar wasn't handed down from on high by an authority, it's an evolved, undirected cultural artifact. There were definitely influential actors, like the (IIRC) monks who first developed the capitals, lowercase, and italics we now use without a second thought, or Noah Webster's personal preferences for spelling which he published and we now largely accept. > To me, it says, "I went to a good school system and was taught correctly!" I'm not sure. I guess it depends on the test - if it's asking "which is the past participle form of 'run'", then I'd agree, that's just memorization. But if it's simply asking "which sentence is more correct" and one of the sentences has an improperly conjugated verb, that's not something one even needs to be formally taught if they've read much. If you can't string a sentence together such that it can be read unambiguously, how can I expect your code to be readable? > 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. I'd be willing to bet if you laid out two identical sentences, one with "your" and one with "you're", these people you speak of would be able to choose the correct one. They may not always use the correct one in the quick, ad-hoc process of writing a sentence, but I'm sure they know right from wrong if asked to scrutinize.
- FreebytesSector 14y ago
  Natural selection was not a conscious choice. There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities. Sure, many of these choices may have been based on their own experiences, but they were not necessarily the best choices. They were decided by a small group of individuals, but again, the choice was not strictly a natural selection of grammar rules. Language more often follows this pattern than grammar because people are more likely to argue over grammar than language itself, excluding etymology, of course.
  - nollidge 14y ago
    > There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities Just because somebody makes a decree about grammar doesn't mean it'll be widely accepted, any more than an organism obtaining a genetic mutation means it'll become spread throughout the population in subsequent generations. My point is just that there wasn't any overarching plan. People design their own use of it, but whether or not that becomes popular enough to be considered "the rule" is analogous to natural selection - messy, convoluted, frequently arbitrary, but good enough.
lotyrin 14y ago
>it says "I went to a good school system and was taught correctly!" I cant imagine how people can manage to make it past 25 without learning the majority of the rules simply through diffusion; eventually being exposed too enough correct righting that they know the rules without even realizing they know them. There are subtle rules that you might see but not understand which aren't obtainable through such a method, and those are ones that Im willing to forgive. I'm sure I make some of them my self. Irregardless errors in fundamental and extremely obvious rules such as this post say too me I have never consumed my first language in writing willfully and may possibly have zero attention to detail. Tell me you didn't cringe - then tell me that the clients, colleagues or superiors of our prospective hiree won't. A guy on my team uses "undue" instead of "undo" in commit messages. He's a nice guy and as much as I'd like to, I can't repair the damage that does to my image of him; "do", "due" and how "un-" works are first grade material at the latest. I simply cannot understand such a mistake.
jiggy2011 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." Sounds like every programming language syntax ever.

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
  Grammar is probably more important for sales than it is for developers. I get a few sales pitches and tend to dump the ones with poor grammar. I feel like: if they can't bother to send a clean pitch, how well are they going to manage my account?

nollidge 14y ago

> But grammar is just a set of arbitrary rules that some person or group of people decided were correct. That's like saying the evolutionary tree of life is just a set of arbitrary rules someone came up with. It's not, it's a description of an existing evolved system. Grammar wasn't handed down from on high by an authority, it's an evolved, undirected cultural artifact. There were definitely influential actors, like the (IIRC) monks who first developed the capitals, lowercase, and italics we now use without a second thought, or Noah Webster's personal preferences for spelling which he published and we now largely accept. > To me, it says, "I went to a good school system and was taught correctly!" I'm not sure. I guess it depends on the test - if it's asking "which is the past participle form of 'run'", then I'd agree, that's just memorization. But if it's simply asking "which sentence is more correct" and one of the sentences has an improperly conjugated verb, that's not something one even needs to be formally taught if they've read much. If you can't string a sentence together such that it can be read unambiguously, how can I expect your code to be readable? > 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. I'd be willing to bet if you laid out two identical sentences, one with "your" and one with "you're", these people you speak of would be able to choose the correct one. They may not always use the correct one in the quick, ad-hoc process of writing a sentence, but I'm sure they know right from wrong if asked to scrutinize.

FreebytesSector 14y ago
Natural selection was not a conscious choice. There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities. Sure, many of these choices may have been based on their own experiences, but they were not necessarily the best choices. They were decided by a small group of individuals, but again, the choice was not strictly a natural selection of grammar rules. Language more often follows this pattern than grammar because people are more likely to argue over grammar than language itself, excluding etymology, of course.
- nollidge 14y ago
  > There have been many choices in grammar that have been decided almost arbitrarily by higher authorities Just because somebody makes a decree about grammar doesn't mean it'll be widely accepted, any more than an organism obtaining a genetic mutation means it'll become spread throughout the population in subsequent generations. My point is just that there wasn't any overarching plan. People design their own use of it, but whether or not that becomes popular enough to be considered "the rule" is analogous to natural selection - messy, convoluted, frequently arbitrary, but good enough.

lotyrin 14y ago

>it says "I went to a good school system and was taught correctly!" I cant imagine how people can manage to make it past 25 without learning the majority of the rules simply through diffusion; eventually being exposed too enough correct righting that they know the rules without even realizing they know them. There are subtle rules that you might see but not understand which aren't obtainable through such a method, and those are ones that Im willing to forgive. I'm sure I make some of them my self. Irregardless errors in fundamental and extremely obvious rules such as this post say too me I have never consumed my first language in writing willfully and may possibly have zero attention to detail. Tell me you didn't cringe - then tell me that the clients, colleagues or superiors of our prospective hiree won't. A guy on my team uses "undue" instead of "undo" in commit messages. He's a nice guy and as much as I'd like to, I can't repair the damage that does to my image of him; "do", "due" and how "un-" works are first grade material at the latest. I simply cannot understand such a mistake.

jiggy2011 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." Sounds like every programming language syntax ever.