I won’t hire people who use poor grammar (2012) | Hacker News Reader

I won’t hire people who use poor grammar (2012)

hbr.org

18 pointsTomte56 comments

(un?)fortunate url shortening:

https://hbr.org/2012/07/i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo

"I won't read articles published on websites using poor URL shortening techniques. Here is why." :-)

I mean, I wouldn't. Would you?

I remember writing what I felt was thoughtful essay for a history class I took in first year UNI. I did a lot of research, and being a CS major, I Think I crafted a solid logical argument.

The week after the TA started complaining about people's grammar, specifically saying that you can't communicate you ideas if you can't form grammatically correct sentences. She specifically called out the difference between 'it's' and 'its.'

At that point I knew she was talking about my paper, so I chimed in: "Oh you're talking about my paper!" Sorry about that!

I think this is where CS hurt me, cos we are used to consistent rules. When used like this 's denotes possession: "Dave's car." So I sometimes still over-apply this rule to "it" i.e.: "It's car."

I found the whole exchange peevish, which is why I decided to lean into the critique with the TA in front of everybody. I told her to scan the room and look at all the faces assembled.

I told her that if she only was going to consider an argument valid if the grammar was perfect¹, then she wasn't likely to be pleased. Almost everybody in the room had a different mother language than English, including myself.

1. This was in an era before spellchecking became common.

Since we're discussing pedantic grammar rules here anyway (sorry): the problem here is not that the rule is inconsistent, but rather that you are applying the wrong rule.

"Its" is not merely a modification of the possessive noun like "Dave's". "Its" is a possessive pronoun like "his" or "her", a separate (but related) class of word. We don't write "he's car" or "she's car", so we also don't write "it's car".

But that said, this is one is tricky specifically because the accepted possessive pronoun so closely resembles a modified possessive noun. I agree that your logic at least makes sense and I think that makes "its/it's" the least offensive of the common grammar mistakes. I don't see it as nearly the same degree of mistake as "your/you're" "two/to/too" or "there/their/they're".

For example, if you were discussing the soundtrack of a movie about a killer clown demon, it would be entirely appropriate to say "It's soundtrack is well-produced." :-)

Unfortunately this is a fairly shortsighted and superficial article which results in severely reducing the pool of people you can work with to a native speaker heavy demographic. The core of the problem is that it assumed care for detail in a domain the writer of the article is comfortable with, translates to care for detail in every other domain. I find this to be a particular self centric view of the world. It is self evidently false, particularly when you are talking about non native speakers who require significantly more time and effort to achieve parity in English expressiveness. This is unfortunate and is a reflection of parts of corporate America that confuse form for substance. It’s where long performative meetings, low signal to noise PowerPoint presentations, and dress to impress culture originated in the corporate world. Fortunately not all companies think this way, and say what you will about the tech sector, it has significantly moved away from performative corporate America behavior. It has brought other problems to the world, but performative corporate antics was not one of them.

Non-native speakers often have better spelling than native speakers, though grammar mistakes do become apparent in non-native speakers.

It grates me when I have to read business communication with poor spelling or poor grammar, especially when done by native speakers --just as much as it grates native speakers of non-English languages when I attempt to speak their language non-natively and they admonish me for my non-native mistakes.

There is no such thing as a grammar mistake, only a grammar inconsistency. Intelligent people use grammar consistently up to the moment where that consistency impedes clear communication. A grammar "mistake" is a foreign dialect.

Unintelligent people babble wisps of ideas and leave it to the listener to make sense of them.

I disagree. When I took foreign language classes I wanted to apply the prescribed/common grammar rules, but I mistakenly used them incorrectly. I wanted to do apply the rules as a native would, but I got it wrong despite my desire to get it right. Therefore I classify that as a mis-take.

It depends. English is a lot more tolerant of inconsistencies than latin based languages, and the grammar rules are more disperse. Typically in latin based languages the rules are stricter, and it is less socially acceptable to violate them. English is surprisingly tolerant both in the rules and the social acceptance of not following them.

It's a good observation. In my experience, often speakers of non-English will suggest that we switch to English because they feel uncomfortable with my mistakes in their language, rather then put up with my attempt at speaking their language. English speakers don't typically do this even when they are versed in a second language.

agreed, non-native speakers see the rules where native speakers do not.

I suspect this is a bit of a generalization. While learning and seeing the rules is an essential part of bootstrapping the learning os a new language, at some point for both efficiency and style, it'll become second nature and awareness of the rules fades away almost as necessity.

Or put another way, the native speakers have learned to stop following the formal rules and fall into slang, regional dialects, etc.

The non-native speakers only have experience with the more formal approaches. Over time you can see them pick up the local idioms.

Language is a tool. If you are careless with one tool, it is extremely likely that you will be careless with others. This is why the military gets very picky with trivial issues like making your bed (or "rack") - if you're careless with the little (and easily checked) things, you're likely to be careless with the important things.

> The brown M&M’s principle is the idea that small details can sometimes serve as useful indicators of big issues.

> This principle is named after a rock band (Van Halen), who had a “brown M&M’s clause” in their contracts with event organizers, stipulating that the organizers must provide M&M’s in the backstage area, but that there must be no brown M&M’s available. This small clause gave the band an easy way to check whether organizers actually paid attention to all the details in the contract, which was important given how complicated and potentially dangerous the band’s production was.

0 - https://effectiviology.com/brown-mms/

1 - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/

That said, I've worked with many immigrants and had many as girlfriends. I'm very tolerant of the sorts of mistakes that second-language learners make (I've learned and forgotten many languages). I'm far less tolerant of native English speakers who can't be bothered with their native tongue.

This is the way I see it, too. It speaks to someone's attention to detail. If you are going to use "there," "their," and "they're" carelessly or interchangeably, or "your" and "you're," or "than" and "then," what else are you going to do carelessly on the job?

It feels so narrow, almost like the author hasn't met enough people in their life.

People get grammar wrong all the time for many different reasons that are not always "logical": tiredness, loss of focus, focus elsewhere (on the actual content, for instance), dys-something, lack of sleep, something else. And for some reasons, it's not always easy to spot our own mistakes when proofreading. But that's a very well-known fact.

I myself make a lot of mistakes when writing even when I'm pretty sensitive to grammar and pretty good at it. And many very clever people don't seem to be wired for liking / being sensitive to grammar as much as I am.

By not hiring people who make grammar mistakes, you are missing out on great people. Your loss, I guess.

I guess it makes sense to hire people able to write well in writing jobs, but even then, if you need error-free texts, the only way is proofreading by other people and good tooling. So… unless the person does a lot of mistakes without being able to fix them… meh?

Also, I very much prefer reading a text full of mistakes but of which I can follow the logic, than an error-free text that I can't follow.

Maybe a better solution is to make society more tolerant to mistakes when reading? Saying this as somebody who' reading is easily disrupted by writing errors in others' writings.

I wish there was an easy way to correct typos online for the sake of the next person. I understand that this would open the door wide for abuse, but I can dream, right?

It occurred to me too. Something like a browser extension, that would have a database of fixes and/or automatic submission to the author so they can fix it.

But the drawbacks might unfortunately make it not worth the effort indeed (people can get easily offended, the extension could have privacy issues, could be abused, etc).

Years ago I had developed a small module so people could submit fixes to my website. It's not up anymore.

In the end, many people don't care that much too.

The author's grammar and style wouldn't cut the mustard at some agencies where writing is the difference between delight and dejection.

That's why he is the "most intellectual" guy in his hardware store.

Yeah, well these are the same type of people that won't hire you if they don't like your suit at the interview. They think you are being disrespectful or unfit if you wear the wrong tie.

Pure and simple, they are lazy and their laziness affects people's livelihoods. There is absolutley nothing poor grammar tells you about a person that you can't verify in an interview.

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

Followed by irrelevant rationalizations to justify a pre-made decision.

>Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can’t distinguish between “to” and “too,” their applications go into the bin.

If you don't respect your employees as people doing a specific job for you (and need to be judged on their skills on that), then you can also add any number of tests and criteria you want to stroke your ego.

"If you can't solve the Rubik's cube fast enough you're not smart enough for us", "If you can't do an effortless cartwheel, leave now", ...

to be fair, when "to" and "too" is not a typo, its quite insane. especially I sometimes see it from english native speakers, and one just has to wonder "how does this happen???"

It happens cause the words sound similar and they are also spelled in a similar way.????

"Quite insane"??

How it happens: brain fart. We make mistakes for a lot of reasons, all the time, and it's not always logical, like the "it's" you got wrong while probably knowing full well the right spelling.

The written form is derived from the spoken form and not the other way around. This is easy for highly literate people in writing-focused societies to forget, and our education tends to not explicitly address it.

But there it is. To/too, their/they're, it's/its, should of/should've etc are all transcription errors, not a failure to understand or deploy standard grammar.

>to be fair, when "to" and "too" is not a typo, its quite insane.

Huh?

It's not only almost always a typo (as opposed to the kind of mispelling where the person writing doesn't know the difference between the two spellings), it's also a typo that's trivial to make.

Doubly so if you have ADHD, and ten times so if you have dyslexia. But even for the average person, it's just an extra easy to slip o, and as a spelling looks totally legit at a quick context-free glance (which makes sense, since both to and too are actual words).

Literally the opposite of a mispelling "quite insane".

Sell screwdrivers. Feel entitled. Choose pet peeve. Live's great. And short. BTW.

"if job hopefuls can’t distinguish between “to” and “too,”

Why do English speakers consistently label spelling mistakes as "grammar" mistakes? Doesn't English have a distinction between spelling and grammar?

Same reason a whole English speaking country also says "on accident" instead of "by accident" and "I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less"... lack of critical thinking and momentum.

I get the problem with “I could care less” (taken literally, it’s the opposite of what they meant), but what’s wrong with “on accident”? It’s just an arbitrary convention that the common expression is “by accident”, and the other one makes sense by being parallel to “on purpose”.

Edit: also “on command”, “on request”, “on occasion”.

On implies that despite being an accident it was somehow intentional. You "arrive on time" but you don't "fall over on accident". By implies some process not within your control.

> On implies that despite being an accident it was somehow intentional.

Sorry, that doesn’t seem inherent to the preposition “on”.

> By implies some process not within your control.

“We’ll do it, by hook or by crook.”

Also, it’s odd that you want to be this pedantic but not out the referenced prepositions in quotes so they’re not taken as being applied to the following word.

This is literally just dialect it has nothing to do with critical thinking.

"I could not care less" means: "My interest is already at zero". The other form is wrong, its proponents sometimes cite irony, but that's very weak.

It's an idiom so the meaning is inherently somewhat divorced from the literal meaning of the words. In this case nearly opposite of it but that's not super unusual itself. It also has an equivalent where the component words are flipped, but the idiom's meaning is the same. Also not extremely rare.

If someone says this with the "wrong" meaning, and a listener understands what they meant without thinking about it or considering alternatives. And you crash in saying "you're wrong!"... who is wrong there?

On/By I can understand being considered dialect, however English is not my first language so my flexibility could be undue.

But saying "I could care less" can only indicate you've never given any thought to what the phrase actually means and how it conveys almost the opposite meaning to what you're trying to say.

It's internalized sarcasm into an idiom.

My mom thinks felines and canines are literally falling form the sky. How dumb is she!

Someone using to vs too is not misspelling a word; they don't know the difference between two words. That's a grammar mistake. Would you say this is a misspelling?

"I hope they share there food with me."

No, it is not. Spelling is the lexer's business, parsing is the grammar's business.

"I hope they share there food with me."

Of course this is a misspelling.

This is not a misspelling. A person who would write this sentence does not know the difference between there and their. They do not think that their is spelt there.

"to" vs "too" are close enough that could be either a spelling mistake or a grammar mistake. If they get it wrong every time then it's a grammar mistake, if they get it wrong only once, then it was probably a spelling mistake.

This is a misunderstanding of how language works. The written form is derived from the spoken form and not the other way around. Using the wrong letters for words that are phonetically identical in your dialect is a simple transcription error, not a failure to understand the difference between the words.

Hmm…. Working from the title, the author won’t hire people who aren’t native language speakers? Last time I checked, different languages had different grammar and usage which makes it difficult for people to learn new ones. Anecdote: decades back, had a great coworker of Russian extraction. Hell of a time getting him to put articles in his documentation. Code was spot on, though.

You can also be a great programmer or a great hardware technician (since we're talking about "iFixIt") and suck at grammar and/or spelling, even without having dyslexia. Perhaps you never cared for non-programming languages, and was bored at school when you were not programming...

The author just has some prejudices and ossified criteria, and since they are in a position to judge people based on them, they do.

Famously Einstein was a very bad speller, not just in English, but also in his native German. But according to this nitwit he wouldn't be smart enough to work at ifixit.

Einstein probably would have made a bad software developer for ifixit. There are many companies who primarily do boring work and do not need brilliant minds, and what they need are merely competent minds in x domains. And I'm not surprised if that also includes native-level {language}.

He does provide for an exception for them[1].

[1] >Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can’t distinguish between “to” and “too,” their applications go into the bin.

The very first line is an error in diction (word choice). Why should I work with someone who doesn't even know what words mean?

Also, this person works at iFixit, which is "bad grammar" itself, and also dedicated to the supposedly moral imperative to repair damaged things to get the benefit of their full value. Yet he discards people for imperfections?

This is quintessential HBR material. Wannabe "thought leaders" high on their own success, publicly embarrassing themselves.

His argument is based on an invalid assumption that grammar and languages is immutable or at least that there is only a single source of truth but that is not the case. Language varies with the geography and age and continually evolves and changes.

As long as the idea gets across that’s all that matters. No one will mistake too for to so it’s pointless to care.

I wonder if the grammar test is still used because for any non -writing roles he lacks validity to use it as selection instrument.

I get your living language counter-argument, but I must say that I enjoyed reading it and taking it under consideration precisely because it was well formulated.

However, I’d say that just because something is “living”, that doesn’t mean that it’s also saved from deterioration.

I don’t think we can easily do away with grammar and syntax without detrimental effects to language and communication.

"Language evolves" is a good reason for why we stop using archaic words, and why new words enter the vocabulary. Nobody says "whichsoever" anymore, but people do say "microwave" because language evolves.

When someone confuses one word for another (they're vs. there vs. their), that's not language evolving. It's someone making a mistake and confusing one word for another.

>> And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re.

Their, there, and they're what?

I mean, it's fine if you don't like quotation marks ("inverted commas") but don't then go and complain about other peoples' grammar because they don't "care about [those] details".

Also, "itses"? itses? You have got to be Jo King.

"And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil’s in the details."

I'm pretty sure that my 8th grade English teacher would have marked that one down, saying that "just like" should be "as with" or "as in".

Unfortunately, the more languages I learn to speak, the more I start mixing up their grammar rules.

Programming languages don't help either: The full stop goes outside the quotes, right?

Fitting URL in the address bar ;->

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