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Comment by Peroni | Hacker News Reader

>the candidate did not speak any Polish, but was based there and graduated from Warsaw University of Technology. He spoke in broken English, and with a very strong accent that sounded Asian, but these weren’t warning big red flags, and the candidate sounded motivated.

This is ridiculous. According to their resume they lived, studied, and worked in Poland for over 10 years and don't speak Polish? This isn't considered a red flag? This was a screening call and the head of operations categorically failed.

>Communication was a bit choppy, and the candidate did not speak Serbian, despite graduating from the University of Kragujevac, in Serbia. Once again, they sounded motivated, so proceeded to the next round.

So no actual lessons learned from the last time.

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Well it is technically possible to spend 10 years in a bubble, either academia or professional one, and not learn local language. If your colleagues speak all english, you have non-native partner and don't have motivation to learn it won't come on its own. Not great approach but perfectly realistic.

Don't judge easiness of learning language based on English - its one of the easiest out there to learn (I speak 5 languages and english is absolutely trivial compared to others), especially for folks with similar base (ie roman/germanic ones). Slavic languages are much harder to learn and basically useless outside given country (with few exceptions but usable mostly for C2 or natives level).

Also, compared to many other languages even very basic level of english gets you somewhere, in some languages like French natives basically refuse to speak to you or simply don't understand you unless you have cca B2 level (this is personal experience of me and folks around me where I live)

>Slavic languages are much harder to learn and basically useless outside given country (with few exceptions but usable mostly for C2 or natives level).

Slavic languages are much harder for you. For speakers of other Slavic languages it's about a year of passive exposure to be somewhat conversational.

You've never been to France, right? Maybe this was true 20 years ago, but it is no longer the case. Where I work, in France, there are people who've been here for 10 years who still can't speak the language, which I find pretty depressing. Especially that learning French when you already speak English is pretty easy. I met enough people that managed to become fluent in French in six months to know that it is really not that hard when you put a bit of effort in it. What it usually shows is a lack of curiosity for your environment, which is a big red flag about the social skills about the person.

> in some languages like French natives basically refuse to speak to you

I've never seen this happen, but I do notice a lot of tourists asking for services or starting conversations without saying 'hello' or 'bonjour,' which is considered disrespectful in France

>This is ridiculous. According to their resume they lived, studied, and worked in Poland for over 10 years and don't speak Polish?

Could be russian. :D We have people living here for 60+ years and cannot speak local language.

Not even that, the names used by impersonators are quite suggestive of being natives of those countries.

They are an IT Security company, what did you expect?

Absense of "soft" skills and weird logical process of course

AI slop security company, article is just advertisement.

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