Comment by void_mint | Hacker News Reader

Comment by void_mint | Hacker News Reader

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A friend once pinged me about how I'd handle a request from a candidate to do text-only interviewing. He was outraged. The candidate said it would be easier for them to do a better job text-only, and his first thought was "Clearly they're scamming us." I told him, my first task would be contacting HR to ask if they needed some form of accommodation, to more elegantly address the "Why are you asking us to do this" concern he had, but also that if the candidate needed a legitimate accommodation I thought it would be great of them to accommodate. My friend had never considered that there are people that might need accommodation, and that it was a good point.

The bummer is, I think, most companies just do not give a shit about accommodating anyone. If you cannot fit their mold, they'll just find someone who can. I'm hopeful that more companies will deploy interview processes to bring out the best in their candidates, rather than processes that will specifically weed out everyone but the specific archetype of person a given interview accommodates.

Person-to-person interaction is an important component of most jobs. If a candidate could not conduct a verbal conversation as part of an interview, I would have a lot of trouble fitting them on any of my teams. Siloing with independent projects is an option, but I think would only be sustainable in larger orgs.

I think your post (and unless I misunderstand, your intent) kind of assumes far far too much context to be helpful. A job interview is a very specific set of conversations, whereas the function of a job at a company can have a very wide array of responsibilities that may or may not be related. If a person has a speech impediment/stutter/something like tourettes syndrome, that problem may only impede one's ability during a high pressure, synchronous conversation. Those symptoms may be totally mitigated by lowered pressure or asynchronous communication. To categorically say that someone that has difficulty communicating in high pressure, synchronous communication situations is unfit for "most jobs" is, to me, a huge miss. Especially now, where remote work is such a big deal, and so many conversations are just-Slack or just-email. If you can have a disagreement over Slack without causing adversarialism or frustration, you're far more valuable to a remote employer than someone that can communicate well over Zoom but poorly in text (I think).

I would say, if a person is able to write clearly and thoughtfully, and is competent at their role, they're very well suited for lots of jobs that aren't sales related. The meritocracy that gets touted so frequently (but is actually never upheld) should reward those that are competent at their advertised skills, right? If you're a really good programmer you should be able to find employment as a programmer, right?

I was only speaking about my work environment, and was trying to avoid making broad generalizations, but it seems I didn't try hard enough. I'm sure there are other work environments where verbal collaboration isn't so important.

I think the "Most jobs require" comment was what made it seem to broad. There are lots of jobs that require interview-style communication, I totally agree. For my friend's specific case, it was a dev at a remote company that specifically prioritized working alone and not communicating with teammates 99% of the time, to which I thought it kind of a perfect fit for someone with verbal communication difficulties.

Thanks for clarifying!

Understandable. At the same time, if you have a deaf candidate apply, you and your coworkers have the opportunity to learn some of their non-verbal communication strategies for collaboration.

I think you mean face-to-face communication? Because written text is person-to-person communication. In my experience, and on the jobs I've worked, writing has been a much more important skill than talking.

I'd personally be more than fine with someone who didn't want to ever verbally communicate, as long as they had excellent written communication skills. Especially if it's a remote job. For example, I'm sure there are many deaf people that excel in software engineering roles.

I can see how it'd be a major challenge to be deaf or bad at speaking at an in-person job where everyone else is speaking, though.

I'm much better at writing than speaking, myself, and find it much easier to convey complex ideas in writing (real-time or asynchronously). Especially writing vs. speaking through a conference app like Teams, where the latency can sometimes make things awkward.

Last I checked a developer can update jira, upload patches, review code, deploy code, and chat to slack without verbal communication.

Might want to consider broadening your horizons a bit. I'm sure this is a good description of some software jobs (especially remote), but certainly not any that I've ever held or managed.

One of HR's principal responsibilities is risk mitigation, and different/novel situations present unknown risks, so it is rational to avoid those situations. Most people are not mean (or even inconsiderate, just wary.

I'm not totally understanding. I suggested HR only because I thought they would be better equipped to ask sensitive questions about interview accommodations than my dev-friend.

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