Do you ever feel like other's poor control of English is the cause of a lot of inefficiency? Has anyone figured out how to make it better?
Posted by kutjelul@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 161 comments
In my work, me and the team are constantly looking for ways to improve. In my organization, a lot of information and effort is lost in communication - we have a culture of verbal communication, and even though I've tried to get my team to shift towards a more text based approach, we quickly found out that a chunk of people simply lack the writing and reading skills to do so; think lack of interpunction, mistakes in grammar, etc.
But even as we continue with our verbal-first approach of communication, I'm struggling to understand a hand full of people directly in my 'sphere'. Their accent is too thick, and they won't formulate decent sentences. Repeatedly asking them to rephrase things gets awkward. They're from all over the world, and English is practically no one's first language in our organization. I don't blame them for it, per se- I'd just like to know if this is a common experience among developers, but more importantly, whether there is something I can do about it.
I've already mentioned this to various EMs, and suggested that perhaps we can have a baseline English training. This never happened, and maybe isn't a good idea. Perhaps the issue starts in hiring - e.g. why is someone with poor control of English hired to work in an organization where English is the default language?
Foreign_Addition2844@reddit
I thought thats what the interview had to establish.
TheStatusPoe@reddit
This is something I've struggled with when conducting interviews. I've interviewed some people that I've felt were technically very capable but I struggled to communicate with them at times because English wasn't their first language. It feels like it walks a fine line of not discriminating due to nationality.
Ferovore@reddit
This is advanced white guilt lmao. Do you think if you tried to get a job in a non English speaking company without the necessary language skills they would give you a pass because they’re worried about discrimination? They’d tell you to come back when you have the language skills to work efficiently.
TangerineSorry8463@reddit
As a whitey from a non-firstworld, I get the worst of both world. I'm expected to feel bad because someone of the same color as me had a great great great grandpa that conquered and pillaged, but I've also not partook in it and had an objectively worse life start than the great great great grandson of someone who did
kaladin_stormchest@reddit
Not at all. Communication is one of the primary requirements to work together. If you're unable to communicate your thoughts you can't effectively work.
This has nothing to do with discrimination
thashepherd@reddit
Communication is a critical performance element that should be interviewed for. And believe it or not it doesn't correlate linearly with "accent thickness" or "ESL-ness".
I think it's completely acceptable not to progress someone due to communication difficulties. I also think it's quite possible for a poor English speaker to be a better communicator than a better English speaker. It's also possible for someone who speaks English as a second language, but is on-site with your customer base, to be a better pick than a fluent speaker working remote. All legitimate points of consideration for a leader.
AmateurHero@reddit
Too bad humans are neither writing nor screening resumes anymore. I mean that's hyperbole, but I can attest that my first month of job searching was hell for this exact reason.
goldsauce_@reddit
Resume might be good but how do they get past 1 phone call?
AmateurHero@reddit
Hope that the interviewer is engaging and has technical prowess. Otherwise pray/make a blood sacrifice for the perfect job where you hit all the buzz words.
PressureAppropriate@reddit
Many would probably fail any kind of technical skill assessment too. They just succeeded in costing a fraction of your salary and now you have to train them on language AND technology.
I guess you can be thankful you still have a job and get over the fact that yes you are probably training your replacement…
eggZeppelin@reddit
Like how does someone describe their experience, projects they've worked on, challenges they've overcome, their working style and so forth in an interview at a high enough level to pass the bar but not be able to communicate effectively?
It seems to me recruiting and HR should have some baseline requirement of fluency.
Technology is already complex and difficult enough without an added language barrier
papawish@reddit
I believe pretty much everyone agrees here.
That is why most distributed teams lean heavily towards async short text exchanges (which can be corrected automatically) and even better, image (schemas, mockups etc) based communication.
Language is low bandwidth. Much language is low bandwidth and high burden for the human brain. Much bad language kills companies.
Western_Objective209@reddit
Getting on a call and talking for 5 minutes can solve a problem that will take a week of back and forth messaging
papawish@reddit
It depends, is the call a video call with screen sharing ?
germansnowman@reddit
It’s not always about bandwidth – it’s also about speed. If I am dependent on someone else’s response or input, it is much faster if I can have a quick call with them than typing my thoughts out, waiting for their written response, having to clarify, ad nauseam.
papawish@reddit
Yeah, there are some use cases that require low-latency response. But eagerly and sequentially treating information doesn't scale.
Most exchanges in all of life can be done async. And that does scale.
Western_Objective209@reddit
I mean if you want to argue with people, yes it's probably better to use writing, but if you want to cooperatively work through an issue like "why does this thing look wrong" it's a lot faster to just hop on a call and talk about it then write up detailed explanations
dbxp@reddit
That is why my team communicates solely via oil paintings
Venthe@reddit
Still, if what you want to convey is not refined to the point of being a specification; the best way to communicate is face to face, verbally. There is simply no substitution to this form of communication, we are literally evolved to use it.
And every single distributed team is suffering for it; having to favor "good enough" solutions.
papawish@reddit
Hard disagree.
In-person communication gives you very bad signal to noise ratio in engineering projects.
People tend to speak before thinking, people tend to express a desire to speak and be heard, or decades of psychological compensation, sometimes even object or agress to/with someone purely based on feelings.
You are getting a more empathetic communication, and a less analytic one.
I'll take a well tought-after schema, were people usually answer 90% of their questions while writing it, than the anarchy of messy meetings.
Venthe@reddit
And invariably, things that would be communicated during the meeting would be lost, just to be discovered months into the project. Seen that far too many times to count.
People far too often overestimate their capacity for putting things in writing. There is a reason why even major product's documentation sucks. Coupling that with additional barrier of communicating clearly with people potentially outside of the context, I'll stand my ground.
But hey, if "good enough" is okay for you, then by all means.
papawish@reddit
We seem to agree on one thing. It's that not everyone is made equal when it comes to document writing.
I've been in teams were my approach would absolutely not work. Because people don't have the skills to write good documentation.
I'm currently in a team were the documentation process is top-notch, we make calls here and there, sharing screens. But most of it happen async (like using quick video editing), and I'd never go back to in-person meetings.
You can take the success of the Linux project as a proof that the approach works. And doesn't necessarily lead to "good enough" solutions. You just need great engineers with great workflows and great tools.
Venthe@reddit
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming that it doesn't work. But Linux is a proof that it takes both enormous effort and top skills to pull off; not to mention that nowadays major parts are developed by companies - so it's hard to claim anything about that process.
The pattern that I can see all the time is that with writing, you have only a single method of conveying information; with clarifications being on either push or pull basis. If you ever were on any well-facilitated meeting, most of the questions - and subsequent answers - come about not from the artifact at the end, but from the discussion, non-verbal communication, identifying hesitation in people who won't necessarily speak and do on. This has inherently higher throughput as well precisely because it eliminates async lag.
And that tracks across all the companies I've seen. There are circumstances where written communication works, and can even work "good" but I've yet to see it outperform in-person, verbal communication. Text is best to either communicate the result, to reach the broader audience, or to pin down the major issues before the actual meetings.
And that's also an important factor. Technical writing is a skill that you can learn for work; but the skill of verbal communication and conveying information is learned since childhood.
papawish@reddit
Someone has never been in useless in-person meetings.
MeroFuruya@reddit
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick
Kqyxzoj@reddit
Word.
Ch3t@reddit
*no one
Sorry, had to do it in a thread about poor English.
papawish@reddit
Fair enough :P thank you, I'm learning !
arihoenig@reddit
I have been a developer for more than 40 years. Over time, I have come to realize how important the mastery of human language is for software development. With the advent of LLMs, it has become even more important. The reason that human language is so important is that it is the mechanism by which we communicate ideas with other intelligences (either natural or artificial). Not only is precision in natural language important to communicate an idea accurately, but the language used impacts the thought process itself, so it is important to choose verbiage carefully.
Sloppy semantics result in all the entities using those imprecise semantics to think about the problem space in an equally imprecise manner, which leads to even more ambiguity in the communication, which then feeds back into the reasoning process again.
One recent example from my workplace is people using the word "fix" to mean either the resolution of the root cause or mitigation of the effects of that root cause. When people repeatedly refer to a mitigation as a fix, they shift focus away from the fact that there is an unresolved root cause, and non technical management (understandably) assumes that the fix, is a fix and not a mitigation and that the problem will not reappear. This can, and does, lead to a lot of misunderstanding and wasted effort that depletes the resources that could otherwise be used to actually address the root cause (in effect, the mere use of poor language to discuss the problem is blocking the resolution of the problem).
The impact of persistently using even a single wrong word within a development team cannot be overstated.
germansnowman@reddit
Thank you.
goldsauce_@reddit
Thank you for putting my thoughts into such an eloquent comment.
I only have ~7 YOE but I’ve worked with multiple ESL contractor, you really nailed my experience dealing with them.
The semantics bleeding into logic/design is so painful. Variable names that don’t make sense is just the tip of the iceberg.
iamnogoodatthis@reddit
I love how you are complaining about "poor control of English" but don't know how to use apostrophes properly
p0st_master@reddit
Why are you being so defensive?
iamnogoodatthis@reddit
I'm... not?
kutjelul@reddit (OP)
Got me, but at least the point is clear (I hope) - if so, it should be good enough
if_username_is_None@reddit
I don't think your prose is clear. This is quite the run on:
adenzerda@reddit
Easy to follow for me. Never read a novel before? This kind of compound sentence is common (and is not a run-on)
luciensadi@reddit
Yeah, and the use of a term like 'interpunction' which is just a more esoteric/academic form of 'punctuation' is also a red flag. OP's responsibility as the communicator of content is to make that content understandable to their audience; using pretentious vocab runs counter to that goal.
ComprehensiveWord201@reddit
Those tricksie apostrophes!!!
BitBrain@reddit
My general experience has been that I can document things to death, but no one reads it anyway.
commonsearchterm@reddit
Documentation has to be clear and concise to be readable too.
Some autistic rambling that goes on for pages is just as bad as no documentation
ShoePillow@reddit
When anyone asks you something, direct them to the document instead of answering them directly. Better if you have links in headings so you can send a very specific link
Hog_enthusiast@reddit
Not only documentation, but I can explicitly correct a mistake and one on one explain why it’s a mistake and the person will make the same mistake again later.
flipd0ubt@reddit
I love docs, but they can be like the “Apple $1” sign next to the cash register at a cafe that contains one lonely banana.
thashepherd@reddit
Yes, I feel this way. In my experience the most damaging factor isn't a thick accent. It is somebody who doesn't understand you pretending that they do - or, even worse, believing that they understand you and being wrong.
So believe it or not, this is a communication problem at the fundamental level rather than an issue SPECIFIC to competency.
TheOnceAndFutureDoug@reddit
Yes: Write everything down. No I'm not joking. Post-meeting write-ups, everything is documented, if you have a Slack huddle and a decision is made it gets a follow-up comment, etc. It's written down, they can process it in their own time so it doesn't stop the flow.
If that's not enough... I mean, at a certain point, communication is a requirement to work with others.
586WingsFan@reddit
Maybe we should consider making native English comprehension a core job requirement
Lothy_@reddit
There should be a Center for Colleagues Who Can't Read Good and Who Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too.
dronz3r@reddit
Chat gpt works well in these cases. Mandate all employees to use AI to formulate mails and also ask them to respond with the summay of what they understood from the mail.
bsenftner@reddit
i’m actually about 1/3 complete with a developers communication seminar. one of its key aspects is it directly addresses imposter syndrome and all of the mind games programmers play with themselves in their heads, and then it walks through the basic breakdown of people coming in four different flavors for the way they absorb information and anyone planning complex needs to understand this and present their information in different ways for different people.
Which-World-6533@reddit
I'm frequently amazed at how bad people's reading and writing is.
It's the only reason we have so many meetings.
conchobor@reddit
It's also that a lot people are capable, but they're lazy and don't want to put effort into reading and writing (especially writing, at least not coherently and thoroughly).
I just started a new job where it seems that some people would rather hop on a call to talk about a pull request, rather than, you know, just reviewing it and leaving comments on it that can be referred to later. No, they'd rather just word vomit thoughts and want you to remember everything that was said.
theDarkAngle@reddit
also, for Americans at least, the majority of people working IT now went to school during that era where most schools transitioned to a fairly cockamamy method of teaching reading called the "Whole Language" approach. It affected the development of language skills for basically the entire Millennial generation, and also likely severely damaged interest in reading and writing.
cuntsalt@reddit
☝️ The Sold a Story podcast goes into this in great detail.
Careful_Ad_9077@reddit
*" hey dude, can I record this meeting?".
This works wonders, it creates a record of the meeting, and some people are " record shy" so they start asking for less meetings.
Kqyxzoj@reddit
May I suggest the use of the word "no". Works wonders in clearing up situations, especially when backed up by a clear rationale of how you came to the position of "No, not over the phone".
conchobor@reddit
Sure, but that can be tricky depending on who you're talking to and how established you are at your job. As someone new, you don't want to come off as unfriendly, awkward, or evasive to talking to people. That can hurt you more in the long run.
Kqyxzoj@reddit
I didn't say it was going to be easy. But IMO easier than accepting an other persons suboptimal plan, and just going along with it because "maybe repercussions". Find kind words for "this is shit, and doesn't work at all" that are non-confrontational and do not blame anyone, but do convey that well, this method we are currently using is shit. Why not do this instead? Where you show a worked example based on previous work. Not every lazy motherfucker is an incompetent lazy motherfucker. Some just have to be shown a better alternative.
thekwoka@reddit
A huge issue in many places is that people expect whoever they are writing to to put in way more effort to handle whatever they are sending than they are putting into writing the thing. Like asking a question with less effort into the question than the answer.
Thats always a recipe for failure.
Calamityclams@reddit
Blows my mind how many people spell my name wrong in emails when you can literally copy and paste/read it in my signature.
If you miss something as simple as that, I kinda assume you miss a lot of other finer details.
renaissance2k@reddit
Me too! I have a name with multiple common spellings, and it gets misspelled on a daily basis.
Dude, you had to FIND MY NAME to send me a message. It's inches away from the text box.
bluetista1988@reddit
For many people the block on their calendar is the cue to start thinking about the topic. They won't actually think about doing the thing or getting it done until they're on that meeting. I was against useless or superfluous meetings for a long time, but with some people you just have to have those synchronous blocks for them to take action.
Which-World-6533@reddit
I've found a lot of coworkers simply only work when they are in meetings. It's frustratingly slow.
It's like they need hand holding to fill in very basic documents.
Dev__@reddit
I'm a native speaker of English and tbh I have never heard this term before. I had to Google it and yes, just means punctuation.
TIL
Hog_enthusiast@reddit
A lot of people are literally just dumb. Like native English speakers that just don’t put the effort in to read carefully and they misunderstand simple concepts
avidvaulter@reddit
OP talking about lack of good writing skills and shamelessly uses an archaic word that just means punctuation but was necessary to look up.
This has to be a troll post.
Which-World-6533@reddit
Or more likely it's poor autocomplete or spelling.
avidvaulter@reddit
Really? Why someone who isn't a native english speaker say this about people not speaking english as a first language?
Which-World-6533@reddit
Yes, let's all be very snarky in our responses.
That will encourage discussion.
CatapultJohnson@reddit
I wouldn't go as far.
The word interpunction is spelled similarly in a couple of languages.
It might be that OP just went for the literal calque of that word from his native language, and it happened to be an archaic word in English.
Unfortunately, speaking from experience, that happens way too often when you speak multiple languages on a daily basis.
Sometimes I have to double check if the word I'm using actually exists in one language, and is not a loan I just did from English.
It works both ways, and seems to get worse with age.
kronik85@reddit
My company is basically all native English speakers, and I regularly can't understand what they're trying to convey when they write tickets, comments, pull requests and commits.
Just wanted to empathize with you, and let you know that this happens in English only companies as well.
I've had too many arguments over the definition of basic English words to count.
AdmiralCarter@reddit
I often just have to keep things documented or ask if I can record the meeting later if I can't understand someone verbally. Tone is a huge issue for me - currently have a manager who doesn't understand how jarring his tone is, and while he thinks he's being accommodating and actually answering questions, he actually comes across as quite rude and unapproachable, and very unhelpful. Have to keep reminding myself that he's from mainland China and is just Like That, its more of a translation problem and a different cultural context problem than an actual pointed dislike.
p0st_master@reddit
I’m glad this is finally being brought up. I think during the era of zirp any warm body was hired so soft skills didn’t matter. Now with ai and the job market shrinking these things are starting to matter.
zergling321@reddit
I feel more like the cultural differences. I recently joined a big financial company. I come from a small startup; we were less than 10 people. Previously, most communication was in written form. Directly to the point, it felt efficient. Now, in the big company, everything needs a meeting; my team communicates with more than a hundred people. Many people simply write "hello" in chats and wait for a response; when you get to them, the response is either "how are you?" or "do you have time for a call?" Multiply that by all the interactions. It's SO frustrating. Now I understand why someone had the need to create nohello.net
Many of them prefer calls because they are so slow at typing, but that's not all; All the meetings start with 5 to 10 minutes on "How are you?" "Let's wait for everyone to join". Also, they sometimes don't know how to use their tools, like clicking the unmute button before speaking.
Another pattern I've noticed is that some people write emails with a bunch of statements, then end it with "Kindly Advise". What's the actual question? Yes, those statements are true, but where do you need the advice?
harylmu@reddit
Please do the needful
kerrizor@reddit
“the team and I”
I mean, as long as we’re critiquing English competency.
Melodic_Impress9664@reddit
Their inability to formulate proper sentences could also be a context problem. A valid high context message could absolutely be perceived as broken by a low-context recipient, specifically because a lot of... err... context is assumed, but is not really spoken out. Plus, a lot of people do not realize that voice tone, facial expressions, do not transfer well to the other side of a zoom call.
Also, idioms are the worst. They never translate well, just don't use them and don't let people on the other side of call use theirs (interrupt, ask to rephrase or rephrase yourself and ask to confirm, whatever). Just... don't.
If nothing helps, switch from live talk to communicating in projects and milestones. Choose one person from other side to be your liaison, assign dates and tasks and make him accountable for results. This needs management approval ofc.
Source: was "that overseas guy" for quite some time long ago.
samudrin@reddit
~~me and the team~~ are constantly looking for ways to improve
the team and I are constantly looking...
CupFine8373@reddit
no offense but at FAANG I've seen many with an awful accent on levels all the way up to L6. So probably means that is fine.
Fidodo@reddit
I feel like there's a lot of cope during the interview process. Sometimes you might think oh, their English isn't the best but maybe it's not that big of a deal or maybe it will get better. It wont.
If English is the primary language of the company then fluency is a job requirement.
I want to be inclusive but it's simply a prerequisite to getting things done. If they were committed to learning English they would have already done so before interviewing considering how important it is to your career.
throwaway0134hdj@reddit
I’ve worked on entirely Indian/Chinese teams and it’s not so much about the accent (though if thick enough that can be a problem), it’s more so that they are speaking from the mental framework of their native language they might describe sth that to them makes perfect sense in their language but the whole meaning in lost in translation. There is a lot of cultural variations with how ppl communicate that adds a layer of difficulty. Another thing that always getting me is pacing - for some reason they speak a million a minute… what I’ve tried to do is not get too wrapped up in details but try to capture the underlying meaning. So don’t try to focus on the details, more see the forest for the trees. If you come back confused, send them a quick message and get them to type it out into a message instead. I find often it’s easier to communicate with them through messaging than verbally.
jmreicha@reddit
I can't even get people to write descriptions in tickets.
HoratioWobble@reddit
I found Native / Non-Native speakers to be an absolute minefield for getting stuff done and miscommunication.
Sometimes words just don't translate well, there are colloquialism that one side takes for granted and the other doesn't understand or it means something different.
Not that long ago, we were talking about an asshole and I said "sounds like a bellend", but when translated back it meant "handsome man" or something like that and caused an argument until we realised.
Constantly trying to agree with people, who think i'm arguing wth them too. Like we're saying exactly the same thing but there's a translation misunderstanding.
It's also why i think most offshoring projects fail or end up with bad quality, it's not that they're not good developers - it's that it's hard to communicate on the same level so stuff get's misunderstood, misrepresented and missed.
Careful_Ad_9077@reddit
I work in a Mexican consultancy for a usa company.
Whenever we get one new guy on board I have a small session on how to improve communication, as there are also cultural barriers in play here.
jordynextdoor@reddit
Never give instructions over meetings. Ever. Instructions need to be written so people can be held accountable.
OtherwisePush6424@reddit
don't wanna be nitpicking but "a hand full of people" put in a grammar rantpost and also being unmentioned in 110+ comments is quite telling
throwaaway788@reddit
The lead devs on my team expect mind readers and have a habit of not using technical details that are important. They'll say "tell the user their profile was updated" but in this case "tell" is a toast notification. Then they get upset when you ask for clarification like you were just supposed to know they wanted a toast notification. It's awful.
SpaceToad@reddit
Absolutely, I never understand how people with terrible communication skills manage to get these jobs - I'd take 1 average developer that can communicate and work well with others over a twenty 'elite' developers who can't communicate or understand problem scope properly and have no initiative. I would say technical interviews are absolutely screening for the wrong qualities at the moment.
Qinistral@reddit
Needs to be filtered for at hiring. Work with recruiters to ensure “communication” is a skill on your rating sheet.
And if you have tech interview guidelines add to it that problem prompts should be communicated verbally as much as possible.
LoveThemMegaSeeds@reddit
Interpunction? Do you mean punctuation? Who says interpunction, is this your second language?
bluetista1988@reddit
I did my minor in communications and took English classes for most of my electives in university. That meant I spent a lot of time reading, writing, and making presentations. I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I feel like I have a good grasp on communication skills.
I was a stickler for tight, structured and correct communication for a long time, but these days as long as I can understand someone and communicate with them I'm happy with that as a baseline. I have tremendous respect for those who show up and try their best working outside their native tongue. I'm way more empathetic to it now that I have a spouse and extended family that speak English as a second language.
What I'm less tolerant of is laziness, sloppiness, and apathy.
grilledcheex@reddit
I work in very international setting with dozens of nationalities, so it’s crucial that we can communicate effectively in English. Yet it somehow seems taboo to criticize people’s English skills, spelling, pronunciation etc. It’s really hard to have a proper design discussion with “yes” and “no”.
Harag_@reddit
As a non native English speaker please feel free to correct me or ask questions if what I said doesn't make sense to you.
I am quite aware that it is my second language natives correcting me is actually the fastest way to get better.
This also includes accents. If the accent is too thick to understand then it is just a mistaken pronunciation.
I know a lot of people touchy about the subject (especially in native English companies) but I never understood why. When someone points out a mistake in a code review I don't think they are somehow insensitive. In fact it can be a helpful learning tool. Why would speech be different?
hippi_ippi@reddit
Don't want to be seen as racist or intolerant. And we're not like, English teachers, so it could seem nitpicky or criticising someone's English ability as opposed to helping them.
I dunno, maybe you can help us then - how can I tell a colleague I have nfi what they just said? I do ask them to repeat themselves but what then if I still have nfi? Tbh a lot of times I just move on... which is not good.
Harag_@reddit
I understand that. However, it is also frustrating for us. Failure of communication is bad for both parties.
If possible it is a good trick to ask them to summarize their problem in an email. Writing doesn't have accents so it is more understandable and you can read it multiple times.
If that is not viable you can try to say things like: "In summary..." or "So you are saying..." and try to repeat the gist of what you understood. Then they can correct you on things. In case you've understood literally nothing you can blame it on bad network connection or just bad hearing and ask them to repeat it a bit slower. Speaking slower and more carefully usually makes people more understandable. At least this is what I do when I encounter such problems.
hippi_ippi@reddit
Good tips, thanks! If only I can get other devs to write emails! I think it's been years since I read an email from a dev lol
chaos-spawn91@reddit
Language skills feel more personal, and some people may be more sensitive about it, compared to strictly technical skills
Tervaaja@reddit
For me english is my second language. The worst communication issues I have with english native speakers from UK. They use such phrases and terms, that meaning is impossible to understand without rote learning.
For example, i was once wondering long time why they speak about red tape when in our system has not any tapes anywhere.
MorallyDeplorable@reddit
The thing that irritates me the most is when people only respond to the first part of an e-mail and ignore everything past the first paragraph
happens way too often
fissidens@reddit
I've worked with tons of people who were not native English speakers, with heavy accents. It's never been an issue.
I'm generally inclined to believe that this is an issue with native speakers not being willing or able to parse international English. It's a pretty common issue.
However, if it's so bad that two non-native speakers can't even communicate over slack with each other then that's another story, and seems like a major hiring issue.
blobblobblob69@reddit
I’m sorry but this seems like such a non issue. English is not my first language and I’ve also worked with people all around the world with different accents. Sometimes we struggle to understand each other but we’re always respectful and ensure we’re on the same page, even if it’s asking them again and again. It’s happened with me as well. Eventually as I communicate more frequently with a certain accent, I start to understand them much more easily.
RandomLettersJDIKVE@reddit
Translating technical documents from one language to another is a pretty good use of an LLM, assuming they can proofread the doc after. My native-English colleagues make grammar mistakes.
As for the "accent is hard to understand", go have a conversation with them. It's just like visiting Scotland, you don't understand the accent till you chat with a few Scots.
According-Music141@reddit
I can't help myself... *others'
k4b0b@reddit
It sounds like reading/writing is a bigger problem. Suppose those co-workers took training to improve their English skills. The improvment is likely to be in reading/writing, rather than their accent.
When I worked with an offshore team in Vietnam, we had a similar language barrier. So instead of forcing verbal communication through meetings, I made everything asynchronous. Docs, emails, messages, screen recordings, and pull requests were how we communicated. The other benefit was that everything was documented, we didn’t have to repeat ourselves, and we didn’t need super early/late cross-globe meetings.
Once LLMs entered the scene, language was no longer an issue.
UKS1977@reddit
Communicating verbally is the worse form of information transfer except for all the others.
Your colleagues are shite. At least talking to them, you can tell they are shite early and often.
Lentus7@reddit
Well you getting what you paid for.
Sfacm@reddit
No, I work in an international organisation and 90% are non native English speakers. We often joke how most difficult to communicate with are native English speakers, ofc with their specific accents, fast speaking and wider vocabulary...
Regarding proficiency, part of the job interview is answering some open ended questions in writing. A bit more painful to score, but weeds out people who can't write understandable English...
WJEllett@reddit
This can be an awkward topic, but generally, good use of language is something I look for in interviews. I consider this a core skill. Broadly, the more senior a role is, the more weight I place on the importance of communication.
In my role I also sometimes mentor more junior engineers in communication. I think framing this as mentoring around “communication” rather than “English” is a good way to get around the awkwardness of it being a second language, and is also more to the point. I don’t need somebody to write me a sonnet, I need them to write me a good post-mortem, so calling it “engineering communication” is reasonable.
Ab_Initio_416@reddit
“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”
—Harry S. Truman
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Lead by example. From now on, draft a written summary of your verbal exchanges, run it through Grammarly or ChatGPT for proofreading and editing, then send a copy to everyone who was part of the exchange. If others see that the approach has value, they will follow. Now that Grammarly and ChatGPT are available, poor written language skills are no longer an impediment.
Rascal2pt0@reddit
No; the inefficiency IMO comes from removing technical people from product and management discussions. Early in my career i worked directly with sales and leadership and we shipped a ton of features and made a ton of money. Heavy leadership structures pushing us further and further from places where we can discuss what is and isn’t possible along with providing feedback for how we think we can accomplish something has made a ton of churn and spaghetti.
I’ve worked with people who barely spoke English and done amazing things. The dogma is telling you we don’t write code fast enough but that isn’t the problem.
forbiddenknowledg3@reddit
Wow that sucks. Engineering should absolutely require solid technical writing skills. Yes even in SWE.
ComprehensiveWord201@reddit
The number of times I have clearly laid out the state of something in a message, only for a coworker to very clearly not have read the message and ask directly, again, is insane.
03263@reddit
Indians in particular yes. I have worked with some that had good English but many just thought they did and really can't communicate effectively, lack in both producing cromulent sentences and comprehension of anything more than very simple short English sentences. It's a national language in India so I think a lot of them assume they know enough English but really don't, or have such a thick accent it's way worse than the typical ESL.
intercaetera@reddit
New word unlocked.
sasjumb@reddit
Apperently origins from The Simpsons show
Ch3t@reddit
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
codescapes@reddit
Part of the challenge with Indian English is that often speakers will literally be using a different grammar or word meanings without realising it. Accent is one thing but the words and sentence structure isn't what you would expect either.
There are the obvious ones like "I have a doubt" (meaning question) but then there are random weird ones like "preponed" (i.e brought forward, opposite of postponed). Even just pronunciation can be a challenge, I got deep into a conversation where a guy kept telling me how he "data mined" xyz and I was extremely confused why he was talking about data mining until it became clear he was just saying "determined" but pronounced it "day-ter-mined".
I'm pretty well travelled and have an interest in language so I tend to do alright but I've seen where it becomes a real mess is when you have two people whose native language isn't English and both are not totally fluent. That's a genuinely significant language barrier.
Ok-Chair-7320@reddit
I "data miner" your comment to be deserving of an upvote
po-handz3@reddit
'Please do the needful'
jek39@reddit
Kindly
Jealous_Theme2741@reddit
English’s main flaw is it doesn’t use enough letters.
In Polish, the words are gnarly but almost always read exactly as spelled. We should add letters to differentiate between vowel sounds (door, stoop etc)
zayelion@reddit
Shift to text as base and spoken language to direct. Everything is go write something down or go read for instruction. Templates for common things like meetings.
Drinka_Milkovobich@reddit
Written communication allows non-native speakers time to formulate and translate. I’m occasionally surprised how good some folks’ written language is compared to their spoken English. Accents and colloquialisms come with time so I prefer to give people grace within reason. There are obvious limits to this (you should be checking basic to intermediate proficiency in your day-to-day business language). I’ve also picked up a lot of Indian and Chinese English quirks, so it gets easier over time for me as well.
Funnily enough, the most disastrous miscommunication I ever had was with an Australian colleague- I don’t remember the specifics but we were literally interpreting the opposite thing and deleted a DB, losing an hour of user data after restoring from the previous backup
photonsforjustice@reddit
"Yeah nah"
"Nah yeah"
Drinka_Milkovobich@reddit
Clearly happened because they are upside down
dezsiszabi@reddit
Yes
throwaway_0x90@reddit
Since this sub is about devs and you're typing in English, I'm assuming this is about people in Asia(including India) communicating with folks in English-primary countries.
If you're just straight hiring people that can't speak even high-school English then I dunno. Other than that given a reasonable amount of effort & time, usually people overcome this and it becomes business-as-usual.
Feroc@reddit
I am from Germany, so German is the default language. Most people here can speak German and English, but when we hired new people who could only speak English, it was a big minus point. It's already complicated enough to share knowledge and requirements when everyone is speaking their mother tongue.
lurking_physicist@reddit
Thank you. OP and other commenters belong to /r/USdefaultism/ . Is "other's poor control of English" the problem? Well, have you considered your poor control of Mandarin/Hindi/French/...?
tcpukl@reddit
Americans didn't invent English anyway btw!
Though you think everyone on the internet is American.
apartment-seeker@reddit
Would probably be news to a lot of Americans
lurking_physicist@reddit
British are usually a little more aware that not all babies come with English installed by default. When someone is obnoxiously English on the internet, they are usually Étatsunien. (Note that I didn't imply the converse: there are many people from the USA that are not that obnoxious.)
kutjelul@reddit (OP)
I'm not in or from the US :) Thing is, I am not employed by anyone where the default language is ` Mandarin/Hindi/French/...?`
po-handz3@reddit
Have you considered not working for English companies? Problem solved.
apartment-seeker@reddit
Most of the overseas people I have worked with have been in South America and spoke better English than a lot of Americans.
We did have one guy in Brazil who did have a bit of a language barrier, but it doesn't a huge deal.
If we are talking the US, bad writing is common whether someone is a native English speaker or not.
Vedris_Zomfg@reddit
I worked for the last 9 years with people from GER, US, Spain, Australia, Ukraine, Russia and India. I faced a lot of speaking and cultural differences.
Regarding communication and documentation especially when adressing the management or stakeholders I follow a few principles : * write down requirements in simple clear english as acceptance criteria in every task * use diagrams where possible. This helps a lot. * ask people to acknowledge or summarize in their own words to confirm their understanding.
Far_Archer_4234@reddit
I once worked with a swe that still couldn't touch-type. He would hunt'n'peck across the keyboard with his index fingers.
Imagine having text convos with him. 🤮
redbarone@reddit
In every workplace is it demoralising to have to dumb your language down for non native speakers. This happens when the non natives don't immerse themselves in your culture, rather they only mix with their own people. It creates a patois of idiocy in the end.
When learning Italian, I used to watch their parliament TV to get the accent right. I put the effort in and was complimented a few times on my Italian accent and for being understandable.
farox@reddit
It took me a bit to understand (way back when) that programming isn't a math problem, but a language problem.
Someone/a client, has an issue and wants a solution, that needs to be translated into words by them, then into specs, then understood by someone to implement and finally into a language that a computer can handle.
Admirable-Two-3143@reddit
This is one of those invisible, high-overhead tasks that never shows up on a project plan.
You've described it perfectly sir. It's the constant mental energy spent translating, not just words, but intent.
That feeling of repeatedly asking someone to rephrase until it becomes awkward is so common you are talking with people from different countries.
There's a point where you just stop, nod, and hope you've pieced together enough of the context to move forward, all while a small part of your brain is worried that a misunderstanding will surface as a problem later on.
And you're right, suggesting a shift to text-based communication often just uncovers a different, more fundamental skills gap. It doesn't solve the problem; it just changes its shape. I've seen some teams have limited success by introducing more structure. Not demanding better writing, but creating very clear, templated formats for updates or requests. Something like a simple "What I need // What is blocking me" structure can sometimes cut through the noise because it forces clarity and removes the burden of composing a perfect paragraph. It's a frustrating position to be in, especially when you can see the drag it has on efficiency. You end up wondering if it's a process problem or,
as you said, something that should have been filtered for during hiring. It’s a really tough issue.
JustForArkona@reddit
At least in the F500 i work at, the higher up in the organization you are, the less you read emails. Basically if I'm emailing the president it needs to be "app good 👍" or "app bad 👎"
Mundane_Locksmith_28@reddit
Shoulda studied English at uni instead of these useless, low-bandwidth stem degrees
bajosiqq@reddit
Use chatgpt to translate bruh
charlottespider@reddit
You're downvoted, but using AI to correct and format emails and Teams messages helps non-native english speakers on my team. Here's a place where AI is 100% useful, but this sub wants to knee-jerk into oblivion.
Rain-And-Coffee@reddit
My team is great at spoken communication, however writing not so much.
I write 90% of my companies documentation because everyone else seems to struggle with clear writing.
Good technical writing is tailored for an audience, it’s clear, concise, and easy to understand. The Google writing course is pretty great.
Informal_Tennis8599@reddit
I love remote work. This is why remote work is more efficient. Verbal first has nothing but downside as far as work is concerned. Even when everyone is intelligible, the 'he-said, she-said' is still a big problem.
RandyHoward@reddit
Remote work doesn't remove verbal communication, or even verbal first. I've been a remote worker for a decade, and this is as much of a problem, if not more of a problem, as working in an office. When I worked in an office I only had to deal with coworkers who were local to me, there was never a problem with understanding someone's English. But since I've gone remote I've worked with people all over the world and have seen far more communication issues. And these problems aren't restricted to verbal communication. When someone has a poor grasp of a spoken language, their written communication doesn't tend to be much better.
Informal_Tennis8599@reddit
That's a skill issue
RandyHoward@reddit
Uh yeah, the skill of understanding English. What I'm saying is that remote work doesn't solve these problems or make them more efficient as you claim. In fact, these problems can get worse with remote work.
hippydipster@reddit
That's what's being said and discussed
chaos-spawn91@reddit
Do you mean async communication?
buzzon@reddit
This one is easy. You just learn each team member's native language and communicate with them in their native language. No inefficencies whatsoever!
danielt1263@reddit
I don't know why you were downvoted. It's the first thing I thought when reading the OP. "Why make it a them problem. Maybe it's a you problem."
glhaynes@reddit
Don't you mean "others'"? :)
But yeah, imo, it's an underrated/under-discussed contributor to cohesion and efficiency. Honestly, in my experience, a lot of it comes from people who are competent (and often even extremely-competent!) but don't pay attention to autocorrect changing "not" to "now", etc, inverting their intended meaning. That's life; I guess your best bet is to try to step in and mitigate while retaining the value of their vast intellect.
putin_my_ass@reddit
What's their price? Are they likely to complain about violations?
tetryds@reddit
Because they are much much cheaper.
I see a strong movement towards LATAM nearshoring for this reason. Much better communication skills both in terms of language but also culturally more inclined to help, understand and be understood.
Nofanta@reddit
Of course. I wouldn’t hire anyone who doesn’t have a perfectly fluent level of proficiency.
topMarksForNotTrying@reddit
This is something that we've run into. Communication is as important as the technical skills of the individual.
In my opinion, the solution is as you mentioned: properly screen applicants during hiring. This is what I've done in my most recent round of hiring; if an applicant is difficult to understand and they cannot express themselves properly during the interview then it's unlikely that they will magically improve. This might be difficult or easy depending on where you live since that dictates the general language level in your applicant pool.
You wouldn't hire a "senior" dev that you need to train how to program, why would you hire someone that you need to train to communicate?
The complication comes when you take into account that there are multiple types of communication. Someone might be great at verbal communication but terrible at getting their ideas out on paper.
Adorable-Fault-5116@reddit
I think this is true but I think this is true with teams of entirely native english speakers. People just don't read and just don't listen. One day I will accept this and not be frustrated with it, and achieve total bliss
Linaran@reddit
Usually not an issue but on rare occasions just buy a few group English lessons and nicely tell people to attend. Won't be awkward unless we make it awkward.
bin_chickens@reddit
From my experience:
1. It gets better with more verbal communication and understanding of each individual's communication style
2. Have a written standard for how to review/plan/document/feedback/etc. This should include expectations of structure, content, references etc. Grammar then takes a back seat and shouldn't matter as much, if they can communicate the concepts well.