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Comment by bathtub365 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think it skews towards English speakers in particular: it actually skews towards strong communicators in the preferred communication language of the team. A great engineer who can’t communicate effectively with the team due to a language barrier isn’t a very useful team member. It’s tempting to think that technical ability should be the sole measure of someone’s worth as a engineer but that simply not true outside of working in a vacuum.

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But English skill is a major component of being a strong communicator in English.

Native English speakers who practice speaking English every minute of their lives would be at a huge advantage.

Not necessarily. English as a second language speakers who may have a accent or take longer to formulate their responses are at a disadvantage in person. I've met many who have expansive vocabularies and impeccable grammar, and I am one myself, but it's hard for us to get over the first impression of the accent and to formulate our responses with natural timing.

For us writing sets a level playing field.

> A great engineer who can’t communicate effectively with the team due to a language barrier isn’t a very useful team member.

This is a much lesser bar than "strong English writing skills" that the article say you should require. "strong English writing skills" will force you to overlook most immigrants, but most of the great engineers in USA are immigrants so you'd handicap yourself by doing that.

You'd handicap yourself much worse by hiring people that you can't effectively communicate with.

You're not necessarily hiring people you're working with, even if you're hiring for your local office.

Say your company has an office in Germany, well you're going to communicate with colleagues whose native language is German. Or say your company decides to select a supplier from Japan, you have to communicate with them. You can't say they shouldn't have been hired in the first place.

That’s a completely different topic from hiring immigrants with insufficient English skills.

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