
I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar - fogus
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html
======
hythloday
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.

~~~
quotemstr
All the examples you cite are stylistic choices and have nothing to do with
"grammar". (I also personally disagree with all your suggested edits,
especially the first.) Using Hungarian notation in C may be poor style, but it
conforms to the C grammar.

~~~
hythloday
For clarity, when I talk about "grammar" here I'm talking about what Wikipedia
calls "orthography", which is what I think the OP was talking about. You're
right that #1 is a style correction and #3 is a typographic correction--on the
other hand #2 is unambiguously orthogaphic[0], even if it's not as well known
as it's/its, and if the writer feels justified in making up "itses" to mean
"it's and its", presumably because people can infer what it means from
context, that puts them in a very shaky position as a prescriptivist.

The interesting point that I'm trying to make isn't that that author is wrong
or right, because I don't really care much about slips in orthography. It's
that once you take a prescriptivist stance you're either making an appeal to
popularity or you're entering an arse-kicking contest with a seven-legged
monster with no arse.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound#Hyphenated_com...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_compound#Hyphenated_compound_modifiers)

~~~
quotemstr
> once you take a prescriptivist stance you're either making an appeal to
> popularity or you're entering an arse-kicking contest with a seven-legged
> monster with no arse.

That's an extreme and unjustified dichotomy. The article is written in an
informal linguistic register, not in the voice of a 19th century naturalist
writing for the Royal Society. (Is my use of the passive voice in the previous
sentence also "incorrect" because style guides frown upon it?)

Still, the article's language is clear, precise, and suggests that the author
takes pains to accurately communicate his thoughts. We haven't seen the
author's grammar test. I would suspect that it tests the kind of linguistic
economy I'm talking about, not whether the test-taker has memorized obscure
passages from Strunk and White. As such, the test is probably effective at
eliminating candidates who don't give a damn about correctness.

------
s_henry_paulson
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
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?"

~~~
leephillips
This is crystal-clear to me. What's the problem?

~~~
einhverfr
By Contemporary Standard American English standards comma placements are
strewn throughout the sentence with very little regard for clarity (removing a
few would make it clearer), and the logical relation between clauses leaves
something to be desired.

~~~
aggronn
Are you proposing that the constitution be re-written for grammar every couple
of decades?

~~~
einhverfr
No, but it isn't even clear that the Constitution obeyed perfectly the
standards of spelling and grammar of "it's" day.

~~~
huxley
Standards for comma usage weren't established until almost the end of the 19th
century. Some people used breathing or personal stylistics to decide on comma
use, but there certainly was no general expectation that it would follow
grammatical construction or logic.

Compared to some other 18th century documents I've read, the US Constitution
is downright spare with commas.

------
tokenizer
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
As a spare-time grammar nazi, I find it quite fitting.

------
Spearchucker
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
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.

------
ColinWright
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
"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.

~~~
dsr_
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

------
hkolek
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>

~~~
kahawe
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
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
I would also like this explained. I know very little about who ESR is.

~~~
pja
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>

------
rheide
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
I don't know, sometimes I misspell maintenance on purpose out of spite for the
English language.

~~~
DannoHung
Really? That's a rather phonetically spelt word, aside from the "s" sound at
the end.

~~~
debacle
But why change the spelling? Maintainance looks much more logically correct.

~~~
StavrosK
Because that's pronounced "maintain-ance". Stress on the "ain".

~~~
nirvdrum
That sounds like a regional dialect. I've never heard it pronounced that way
in the northeast US at the very least.

~~~
StavrosK
I don't think anyone pronounces it that way, because what everyone is saying
is the word that is spelt "maintenance".

If you were to actually pronounce the word that is spelt "maintainance", that
is how it would be pronounced, with the stress on the "ain".

~~~
nirvdrum
Bah. My bad. I confused the parties in the thread. I'm sorry for the noise.

~~~
StavrosK
'Twas not a problem!

------
tokenadult
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%...](http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf)

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...](http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx)

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=8655598674229196...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&q=Griggs+Duke+Power&hl=en&as_sdt=2,24)

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-
GZkw6...](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)

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://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...](http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf)

[http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=frfUB3GWl...](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)

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/prepri...](http://geb.uni-
giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf)

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://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.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports...](http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html)

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.

~~~
Alex3917
Great post. Thought this was interesting from the Schmidt & Hunter article:

"This meta-analysis found that the validity of GMA for predicting job
performance was .58 for professional managerial jobs, .56 for high level
complex technical jobs, .51 for medium complexity jobs, .40 for semi-skilled
jobs, and .23 for completely unskilled jobs."

Apparently having a high IQ is a better predictor of being a good business guy
than a good hacker.

~~~
rprasad
Take any "meta-analysis" with a large grain of salt (or better yet, and
industrial size vat of salt).

Meta-analysis suggests that men under the age of 26 have a 60% chance of being
sex offenders. This same type of meta-analysis is also the reason that all sex
crime offenders (including drunk people pissing in a park and amorous couples
getting it on in a dark parkin glot) are lumped together for sex offender
registration purposes, because the meta-analysis suggests that the recidivism
rate for "sex offenders" (regardless of actual offense) is greater than 90%
(without regard to the actual recidivist offense).

TLDR: Meta-analysis can be used to support _any_ claim.

~~~
fishtoaster
Would you care to elaborate on what, specifically, is flawed about meta
analysis? I'd definitely be interested in a source on that 60% number and how
that source arrived at a number that seems, on it's face, so incorrect.

~~~
Alex3917
"I'd definitely be interested in a source on that 60% number and how that
source arrived at a number that seems, on it's face, so incorrect."

I'd be curious to see if anyone has actually done a study on this, but to me
this number actually seems quite low. I would guess that it would easily be
90+%.

------
einhverfr
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
> 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.

~~~
bane
"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.

~~~
einhverfr
I would say "whom" today is reserved for formulaic usage.

In 1912, Edward Sapir ("Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech")
noted the death of "whom." The example he gave was "Whom did you see
yesterday" vs "Who did you see yesterday?"

Granted there are some cool things you can do with who/whom, like:

'Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,

Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,

Welcome tae yer gory bed,

Or tae victorie.'

Of course that's 18th century Scottish and things have changed a bit....

~~~
bane
Sapir was exactly who I was thinking of.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=ofgrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=ofgrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Language:+An+Introduction+to+the+Study+of+Speech&source=bl&ots=PooIswwyky&sig=Fm0p-qz7hfYrQd103LgFGWaRnsw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fHQJUJusGJK00QH14JXjAw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Language%3A%20An%20Introduction%20to%20the%20Study%20of%20Speech&f=false)

Chapter 7 I believe is the relevant chapter.

~~~
einhverfr
That's a wonderful book isn't it? Really expands your ideas of what grammar is
and could be.

------
espinchi
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?

~~~
einhverfr
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
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.

~~~
creamyhorror
I still cringe at all the "would of"s and incorrect "your"s and "their" on the
Net. As an English speaker from outside the US, these aren't mistakes I
commonly see in my country, and they grate. I'm like you - I find it arduous
and irritating to read a passage littered with them, because each one pops up
and distracts me.

That said, if I were hiring programmers, I wouldn't go by grammar. Business
concerns and core capabilities come first. If the person makes mistakes but
does the job best, no biggie. It all comes down to the situation in the labour
market - does demand for programmers exceed supply, or vice versa? If I were
flooded with good potential applicants then I'd weight grammar more heavily as
a differentiating factor - but since good programmers are hard to come by
currently, it's just pointless to do so.

------
columbo
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.

------
crazygringo
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.

~~~
kwiens
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.

------
raganwald

      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
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._

~~~
kamaal
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?

------
exDM69
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
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.

------
irahul
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.

~~~
nirvdrum
My issue is if you're unable to delineate between "it's" and "its" and it's
the language you've been speaking natively for the past 25 years, I tend to
doubt your ability to know what form of "const" to use in C++. At the very
least, lack of proofreading suggests to me you might be rash with your code as
well.

Many disagree with me on this point of view, but routinely I've found that
those that express themselves well in their native language write better code.
That may be a self-reinforcing feedback loop because a lot of bad projects
have a lot of terrible or non-existent documentation. And on a personal level
I don't want to work with someone that communicates like a tween (NB: I'm not
saying that you do, but I've run across it many times).

I also take a lot of issue with the "you know what I mean so you're being a
pedant" retort. Not only is it wholly counter-productive, but it's not even
accurate when you're talking about globally connected people. Quite frequently
a non-native speaker will stumble upon what is written and be thoroughly
confused.

~~~
sampo
As a non-native speaker of English, I have been wondering how much signal it
would be appropriate for me to infer from the kind of sloppy grammar that is
typical only for native speakers of English? [1]

I learned English at school as a second language, and we would always start
with the written form, and then learn how to pronounce. So my "hash table" is
primarily organized based on the written form, and it would be impossible for
me to mix "two" and "too", "they're" or "their" or "there", or "its" and
"it's" [2]. I hadn't even realized that "too" and "two" are pronounced the
same, before a native speaker pointed it out to me, as my hash table doesn't
support that kind of searches.

Also my native language (Finnish) uses a (nearly) phonetic writing, so
phonetic misspelling of words is mainly restricted to people with no high
school level of education, and who didn't do that well in primary school
either.

I do, like the writer of the liked article, get that feeling of sloppiness,
when I see those spelling or grammar mistakes in English text, but I don't
really know how much signal it would be appropriate for me to infer from them?

I probably should not use as harsh standards as I do with Finnish, since those
misspellings seem relatively common in English in the web.

[1] Well, typical of people who learned spoken English before written English,
but in the modern world this pretty much coincides with native speakers.

[2] Well, "it's" and "its" is maybe a border case, maybe not totally
impossible to mix those two, just very unlikely.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
My gut tells me (there's a scientific statement, if ever there was one!) that
it correlates mainly to people who haven't read much in print. Print
publications tend to be edited better than online ones. Unfortunately, bad
spelling is reinforced by spending a lot of time online and being exposed to
misspellings that are not corrected.

As a child I didn't have access to TV, so I read everything in sight and I
read constantly. The end result is I have a particularly sensitive eye for
spelling and grammar mistakes. I find the misuse of, e.g., "loose" instead of
"lose," to be tremendously irritating. The people I know who read a lot simply
don't make trivial mistakes like that unless they're in a hurry and mistype.

Is it sloppy? I would say it's sloppy if writing is a large part of your job.
Otherwise, it's mainly an indicator of someone who doesn't read print very
much.

It is also getting worse at an increasing rate. I remember when mispelled
words and bad grammar in reputable magazines and journals was rare, now it's
almost expected that anything I read will have a few.

~~~
olivier1664
Don't forget dyslexic guy: it makes your indicator wrong. According a fast
google research, it's 5% of people.

------
samwillis
> 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
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 :)

------
lifeisstillgood

      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/>

~~~
gjm11
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.

------
impendia
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?

~~~
clarkevans
Funny, I prefer misspelled to incorrectly corrected. Nothing worse than having
a document littered with poor word substitutions -- at least with a spelling
error I could know a bit more what the writer intended.

Speaking of home purchases, if I were to do it again, I'd get two home
inspections. My primary inspector for my current house completely missed very
expensive (and relatively standard/easy to check) masonry and electrical
deficiencies that were not up-to-code. His report was meticulous... perhaps
because it wasn't prepared by him, but by an intermediary in the same office?

On this topic, I think that being able to communicate clearly is an essential
skill. Poor grammar hurts, although not anywhere as bad as completely poor
analysis. However, if you're going to rank someone on grammar, you should also
rank them on their visual/spacial diagramming skills. A good diagram can
communicate much more effectively than text. I'd rather have someone who is
good at both language and diagrams than someone who is an excellent writer but
unable to illustrate visually.

~~~
shaggyfrog
The one time I hired a home inspector, I got the report by the end of the
3-hour appointment, printed up by his laptop and portable printer. It wasn't
until I read your comment that I now know how what a good thing that was.

------
leephillips
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.

------
AYBABTME
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.

------
ericmoritz
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.

------
cgmorton
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.

------
cafard
"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']

------
kamaal
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
If you can find someone who can sprint 1000 meters, you have a real beast on
your hands.

------
gciii
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.

------
mcgwiz
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.

------
larrys
" 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.

------
drx
I will.

I don't give a shit about someone's grammar if they're good at what they do.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
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
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
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!).

------
linuxhansl
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.

------
lukejduncan
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.

------
ericturri
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_p...](http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html)

------
trustfundbaby
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

------
madink
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.

------
mkup
_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
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
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
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
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
Inertia, I assume.

------
antidoh
"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.

------
Tycho
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.

------
FlyingSnake
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?

------
l3amm
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
> The test is objective

Less so than you might think.
[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001863.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001863.html)

------
ricardonunez
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
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
My bad, I apologize. I still think I'll not use grammar as a very important
issue (at least for some positions) while hiring.

------
yelloblac
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.

------
adv0r
What it they are foreigners?

~~~
sebnukem2
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
> 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'.

------
EternalFury
Bravo!

Poor grammar is the telltale sign of other impediments that hinder the
practice of any activity that requires good attention to details.

------
sebnukem2
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.

------
melissajenna
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.

------
DrJokepu
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
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?

------
SjuulJanssen
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.

------
snorkel
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.

------
baak
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.

------
scott_meade
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?

------
UK-AlasGou
Grammar can often be so complex, that you can get experts who disagree with
each other.

~~~
rytis
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.

------
Produce
The URL:

i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html

I wouldn't hire someone who does anything with poo but dump it too.

------
isalmon
Well, "smart" way to discriminate against immigrants :(

------
degenerate
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

------
Torgo
I will not hire people who use contractions.

------
mej10
Caring about grammar is just a way to signal that you are of higher class than
people that use poor grammar.

------
nihilocrat
If they did that here, we'd need to find a new CEO... but the programmers
would be in good shape.

------
maxer
i wont read an article about people who use poo

blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html

------
macey
anyone else like how the URL is shortened to "i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo"?

/12yearsold

------
scottcanoni
LOL... "I won't hire people who use POO"

Best URL truncation from a serious topic, EVER.

------
pteromyscus
Too bad, Yoda could be a killer programmer.

------
timepilot
I'm guessing he isn't a big Steve Jobs fan.

------
jorgeleo
So... Yoda and all the internet kitties are out of luck...

sad it is;

or . , ;; :

one of those

------
Zenst
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.

------
fingerprinter
To everyone saying it isn't fair...it's fair. I mean, they are his companies.

Stupid, incredibly shortsighted and very draconian, but fair.

------
awestley
I think that ain't no fiar!

------
Hari_Seldon
why do people write "noone" when they mean "no one"? it is very annoying

------
kapupetri
I wouldn't hire people who's eyes point to different directions.

------
benihana
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.

~~~
nollidge
> 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
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
> 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.

------
derleth
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'.

------
kahawe
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.

------
damian2000
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.

