I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar

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.<p><i>People Who Use Poor Grammar</i> should be: People Who Use Grammar Poorly.<p><i>I have a "zero tolerance approach"</i> should be: I have a zero-tolerance approach.<p><i>people who mix up their itses</i> should be: people who mix up its and it's.<p><i>passed over for a job — even if</i> should be: passed over for a job—even if.<p>I don't point this out to be pedantic or to level at the author a <i>tu quoque</i>, 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.

I think it's a fair, but just to simplify the argument:<p>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.<p>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.

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?

Even if this ensures a cultural fit I'd not be so binary about grammar.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Of all the resumes I reviewed one stood out. For two reasons.<p>First, his technical ability, if the resume was to be believed, was impressive. More than a government department could hope for.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

This is the take-away point for me:<p><pre><code> &#62; Everyone says they're detail-oriented in an &#62; application; I just make my employees prove it. </code></pre> CVs are great, certifications and qualifications are great, but if you claim you can do something, I want to see the evidence.<p>When I'm hiring I want to see that the candidate has<p>* ... thought about what I will want and/or need,<p>* ... makes direct claims that they can provide it/them,<p>and then<p>* ... provides evidence to support their claim(s).<p>All the talk about FizzBuzz, trial runs, grammar Nazis, choice of typography, and every other hiring cargo cult comes down to:<p><pre><code> Show me you understand the job you're applying for, then provide evidence that you can do it. </code></pre> Evidence that you've even <i>thought</i> about these issues will get you through the door.

I agree. I think Eric S. Raymond nails it:<p>"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."<p><a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html</a>

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.<p>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.

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<p><a href="http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%20Validity%20and%20Utility%20Psychological%20Bulletin.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://mavweb.mnsu.edu/howard/Schmidt%20and%20Hunter%201998%...</a><p>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.<p><a href="http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.siop.org/workplace/employment%20testing/testtypes...</a><p>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.<p>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.<p>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<p><a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196978&#38;q=Griggs+Duke+Power&#38;hl=en&#38;as_sdt=2,24" rel="nofollow">http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=8655598674229196...</a><p>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.)<p>The social background to the legal environment in the United States is explained in many books about hiring procedures<p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&#38;lr=&#38;id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&#38;oi=fnd&#38;pg=PA271&#38;dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&#38;ots=iCXkgXrlOV&#38;sig=ctblj9SW2Dth7TceaFSNIdVMoEw#v=onepage&#38;q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&#38;f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&#38;lr=&#38;id=SRv-GZkw6...</a><p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&#38;lr=&#38;id=SRv-GZkw6TEC&#38;oi=fnd&#38;pg=PA95&#38;dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology&#38;ots=iCXkgXrnMW&#38;sig=LKLi-deKtnP20VYZo9x0jfvqzLI#v=onepage&#38;q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology&#38;f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&#38;lr=&#38;id=SRv-GZkw6...</a><p>Some of the social background appears to be changing in the most recent few decades, with the prospect for further changes.<p><a href="http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full" rel="nofollow">http://intl-pss.sagepub.com/content/17/10/913.full</a><p><a href="http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_Racial_Inequality.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Fryer_R...</a><p><a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&#38;lr=&#38;id=frfUB3GWlMYC&#38;oi=fnd&#38;pg=PA9&#38;dq=Validity+and+Utility+of+Selection+Models+in+Personnel+Psychology+%22predictive+validity%22+Duke+Power&#38;ots=5O9Hx_E1vY&#38;sig=g-zERWztBWq3h4guEuv9VVkTh8I#v=onepage&#38;q=Validity%20and%20Utility%20of%20Selection%20Models%20in%20Personnel%20Psychology%20%22predictive%20validity%22%20Duke%20Power&#38;f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&#38;lr=&#38;id=frfUB3GWl...</a><p>Previous discussion on HN pointed out that the Schmidt &#38; 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:<p>"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."<p><a href="http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/preprint_j.1468_2389.2010.00485.x.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2012/8532/pdf/prepri...</a><p>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 &#38; De Paepe, 2004; Ryan, McFarland, Baron, &#38; Page, 1999; Scholarios &#38; Lockyer, 1999; Schuler, Hell, Trapmann, Schaar, &#38; Boramir, 2007; Taylor, Keelty, &#38; 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 &#38; 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)."<p>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.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_integrity_testing</a><p><a href="http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&#38;JScript=1" rel="nofollow">http://apps.opm.gov/ADT/Content.aspx?page=3-06&#38;JScript=1</a><p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF" rel="nofollow">http://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9042/9042.PDF</a><p><a href="http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/abstract-14602.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports...</a><p>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.

Now I want to know the following:<p>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.)<p>2) Does he require that you can tell who and whom apart and use them in their correct cases?<p>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 do the same: unstructured e-mails, poor grammar and, in general, bad writing style make me reject applicants instantaneously.<p>However, I wonder if I'm letting good candidates go just because of my grammar nazism.<p>How do you (folks in HN with more experience at hiring) feel about this?

Poor grammar (i wuld leik to apply 4 jorb) is an acceptable thing to use when rejecting a candidate.<p>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.<p>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.

As long as it's a reasonable test, you can argue its merits.<p>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).<p>Beyond a certain point necessary for clear communication, one person's proper grammar is another's irritating pedantry.

<p><pre><code> Applicants who don't think writing is important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren't important, </code></pre> "Citation needed." Or to put it another way, what is the difference between this statement and:<p><pre><code> 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</code></pre>

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.

My train of thoughts:<p>&#62; Everyone who applies for a position at either of my companies, iFixit or Dozuki, takes a mandatory grammar test.<p>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).<p>&#62; Of course, we write for a living.<p>Oh, should have mentioned it earlier. I won't have gone into internal monologue.<p>&#62; But grammar is relevant for all companies.<p>May be it is. But not as relevant as you make out to be.<p>&#62; In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have.<p>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.<p>&#62; 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.<p>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.<p>&#62; So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.<p>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.<p>&#62; 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.<p>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)?<p>&#62; 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.<p>Citation please. And how do you know it's not the other way round?<p>&#62; 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.<p>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.<p>&#62; Grammar is my litmus test.<p>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.

&#62; Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, ....<p>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.

<p><pre><code> 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 </code></pre> I am pretty sure that "already last summer" is poor English grammar. Tisk - this Godel character. Probably not worth a face to face.<p><a href="http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/the-gdel-letter/" rel="nofollow">http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/the-gdel-letter/</a>

Along these lines, let me ask advice from HN.<p>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.<p>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 &#38; fixtures will be repaired or replaced."<p>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.<p>But my real estate agent thinks I'm making a big deal out of nothing. Anyone have thoughts, experience, opinions, advice?

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.

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.<p>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.

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.

Everyone who is getting angry, listen:<p>This isn't a test for suitability for the position. It's a matter of signalling.<p>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.<p>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.

"And just like good writing and good grammar, when it comes to programming, the devil's in the details."<p>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."<p>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.<p>[edit: for 'worth' read 'work']

Ah! The Irony.<p>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.<p>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?

I interviewed at iFixit, and I took the grammar test.<p>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).<p>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.<p>Overall, the interview was a good experience, and probably results in the hiring of great gearheads &#38; coders.

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".<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Thus, the applicability of the article depends on the culture and environment of the team.

" 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."<p>I take issue with this.<p>Assuming you could, assuming they were available to work because they couldn't find any other job, would you hire a Rhodes Scholar?<p>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".<p>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.<p>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.

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

Wow, what a load of nonsense. Some of smartest people I know are dyslexic.<p>I guess they won't be working at any of his companies.

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.<p>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.

Not totally related, but I found it ironic that the URL for this article is "I won't hire people who use poo"<p><a href="http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_p...</a>

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.<p>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<p>a. help increase the diversity of people and ideas in your workplace b. make sure you don't miss out otherwise fantastic hires

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.

<i>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.</i><p>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.

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

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.

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.<p>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?

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:<p>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.<p>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:<p>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.<p>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."<p>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.<p>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.

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.

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.

What it they are foreigners?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?!<p>Do any of you find yourselves talking like that, or no?

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

The URL:<p>i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html<p>I wouldn't hire someone who does anything with poo but dump it too.

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

The "canonical" URL for this article is quite hilarious, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way based on the article:<p>i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html

I will not hire people who use contractions.

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

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

i wont read an article about people who use poo<p>blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html

anyone else like how the URL is shortened to "i-wont-hire-people-who-use-poo"?<p>/12yearsold

LOL... "I won't hire people who use POO"<p>Best URL truncation from a serious topic, EVER.

Too bad, Yoda could be a killer programmer.

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

So... Yoda and all the internet kitties are out of luck...<p>sad it is;<p>or . , ;; :<p>one of those

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.

To everyone saying it isn't fair...it's fair. I mean, they are his companies.<p>Stupid, incredibly shortsighted and very draconian, but fair.

I think that ain't no fiar!

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

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

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!"<p>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.<p>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.

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'.

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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

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.