I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why | Hacker News Reader

I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why

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32 pointsjkuria39 comments

Wow, some really outraged comments so far...

Bottom line: if you're going to work for a company that does significant work with language and documentation, your grammar had better be up to it.

Further, if you're hoping to get into a role where attention to detail really is important, yet you still (after a couple of decades) can't figure out how your own native language works, you're not really suitable for that role - because the implication is that your purported 'attention to detail' isn't truly so.

Is that really so unreasonable??

Other comments rightly point out that grammar capabilities are not always good indicators of ability in other areas. But you'd be amazed how many job applications we see (from both designers and developers) with very basic grammar errors.

Even if the role doesn't demand skills in English you should at least care about creating a good impression enough to make sure you've ironed out grammar errors in your application.

The URL of this page contains the path "i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo". I can't stop laughing!

I just did a phone interview for someone whose resume was littered with small grammatical and spelling errors. It's too bad, because she was really pretty articulate, if only middling when it came to technical chops. But the lack of attention to detail in her resume was enough for me to take a hard pass on her; even if it wouldn't ever reflect on her code, it would very likely reflect on her diligence as an engineer and her technical documentation.

If your resume isn't grammatically perfect, I'm going to have serious reservations about you. If you can't take the time to proofread the living hell out of a one page document that's supposed to be a summary of your entire career and supposed to make me notice you, how am I supposed to expect you'll put in that attention when it matters for your job?

In short: bad grammar is correlated with everything else that I consider bad and here's a complete lack of data to prove it!

Spelling grammar.

Assuming iFixit is meant to be read as "I fix it" why the weird capitalization? As a stickler for correct capitalization, I would not even apply. If I did apply, the whimsical capitalization of the name of the company would (incorrectly) tell me that the company was not that big on following strict English usage rules.

iFixit got it's start with apple products... tear downs, screen replacements guides, etc... their focus was the iDevice market, hence the name.

An intentional decision is not a grammar mistake

Meh. Some of the best IT people I know cannot spell "lose" to save their lives; it always becomes "loose".

So true... I've seen quite a few qualified, creative types that can't spell as well.

I'm yet to encounter an exceptional programmer or sysadmin who can't spell. I don't think your "best IT people you know" gives much credit to your acquaintances in this light.

Right, so none of the people who worked on the HTTP RFC/standard are exceptional because they all missed HTTP_REFERER.

One spelling error that somehow evaded reviewers is something totally different from people who make spelling errors on a daily basis and "cannot spell `lose' to save their lives". Don't you think?

Ha! I also like people who say "recurse".

(In truth I am sympathetic, but still it's hilarious).

A mandatory grammar test for his writing based company seems sensible, but for a company that doesn't rely heavily on writing would be going too far, I think other qualities will start to come into play. Although I can agree with his general point that good programming requires attention to detail, but I'm not sure thats related to knowledge of grammatical minutiae.

What I cannot understand is how anyone is so careless to submit a CV or cover letter with spelling and simple grammatical errors. Spell check + proof reading from someone else, its not hard.

My spelling is shocking. I'm mildly dyslexic I often notice what I actually have written isn't what i think, words missing etc etc.

If I applied for a role where I write public facing documentation sure I'm not a copywriter, don't hire me for a copyriter's job.

Hire me for a technical job? Well I've done alright so far. The thing about coding, the compiler / tests gives instant feed back if you are wrong, programming languages are very small syntax wise. Lack attention to detail? Try putting me on a code review. Yes I suck at spelling, yes I have to forcibly try and still get it wrong, however I'm not a writer I'm a developer and that's where all my concentration goes, in development.

Some peoples skill sets suit different things. Not giving someone a job because they struggle spelling? If it's a copywriter job fair enough, if not, I don't want to work for you anyway, good luck on your employee search.

Well, he wrote that he would account for extenuating circumstances like dyslexia, so if he actually does as he says you'd be fine (for a non-writer position).

But I'm inclined to agree with him. Getting the itses right is trivially simple - there are no judgement calls or anything. And English isn't even my first language. Yet many people people get it wrong, and I can't comprehend how this happens. My only explanation is sloppiness.

Honestly I don't know much about dyslexia and I might be wrong, but it seems to me that even a dyslexic would have no trouble getting its/it's right, even though they might be orders of magnitude slower than non-dyslexics. Am I wrong it this assumption?

I suppose for important texts such as job applications, re-reading to be sure that you get these things right can just be expected of you.

For me, I've found its / it's is a class of mistake that I never made when writing by hand, however, now that I type almost everything, and have a decent typing speed, I just sort of get whichever one comes out. This happens in a number of other cases (their, they're there). If I'm typing at a stream of consciousness speed I start making all kinds of rudimentary mistakes from what I can only assume is a corrupted mental lookup table :)

My grammar is horrible and I get what he is saying. I'm not a native English speaker so I have to dedicate a lot of time to improve my writing in a professional environment. While day to day spoken English is not that complicated, written English is.

The employee version of this is "I won't work for a company run by assholes." Good luck with the fallout from this article, Mr. Wiens.

I think you mean "i not work for company run by asshole".

Reeks of elitism... he's probably one of those owners who forces everyone, even those who are never customer facing, to wear dress attire to work.

Walking into a business when I'm job searching, If I see a room full of engineers who all have ties on, I walk out.

Grammar, Dress code, etc - those things can be priority in some roles... if you are client facing, of course your dress matters, if you speak or write for the company, of course grammar matters... if you are an engineer who only interacts internally, forcing business dress codes is a sign that your priorities are out of line, and thats a big red flag...

That said...

Even I personally am guilty of being judgemental about grammar, but only at a basic level.

If you ask me for "a apple" though, I have an almost uncontrollable reaction to sigh at you in judgement.

Based on this article, this guy would never hire ebonics speakers. He openly admits that he selects against them.

Almost anyone with rudimentary knowledge of linguistics would realize that selecting people based on grammar is not a good idea. This video really changed my view on people with bad grammar: https://youtu.be/pkzVOXKXfQk

This man is publicly shaming himself in my opinion.

No, he won't hire people who only speak Ebonics, just as he won't hire people who only speak any other regional or ethnic variant of English.

He will hire people who can write in correct standard English, which should be anyone who has an education, regardless of the variant they speak in their community or family.

Correct and standard are not the same thing. It's one thing to say African American Vernacular English (AAVE) isn't standard, and that Standard American English (SAE), what with the Standard in the name, is. It's a totally different thing to say AAVE is "incorrect".

Regardless, the idea that everyone in your company needs to speak SAE because it's an important part of the business is a little like Facebook saying everyone in your company needs to program in PHP because it's an important part of their business. There is such a thing as specialization. Not everyone at the company has to be able to do every job.

I thought that would be the likely case, but I read into it and somewhat agree with the author. He focuses on written grammar, not on speech.

So, basically he has a zero tolerance policy to bad grammar.

Nothing good for society ever comes from zero-tolerance policies.

Would you at least tolerate them a bit?

Funny, the first paragraph has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing grammar but rather with knowledge of vocabulary. its more on having no tolerance of people who have issues with vocabulary, grammar, and writing skills, and not grammar only.

I agree with him. I would never hire someone who mixes tenses.

I.e.

"And I guarantee that even if other companies aren’t issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés."

People justify things after having already made the decision (often unconsciously).

Sorry!

> 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.

Ending a sentence with a preposition? I hope for the author's sake that no conservative grammarians arbitrarily hold that against him.

I noticed he linked that very word to http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/ending-sentences-wit...

Fowler's Modern English Usage has no problem with that, or with split infinitives, to name two standard middle school bugaboos.

Indeed, it's now widely considered to be correct. The same wasn't true just a few years ago. It's ironic that he uses a construction that would have signalled him as unworthy of employment to his spiritual predecessors.

Language change is a constant thing, using differences between your written English and that of a potential employee as a proxy for intelligence rather than group membership is foolish and exclusionary. It's only really relevant if the person needs to write in a specific register for their job.

so what ur saying is no one should work with ur rigid ass, okay got it.

Seems a little biased against folks who are not native English speakers.

4th paragraph: "Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.),"

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