Excuse me, is English required for technical interview?
Most of them said:
“If you write good code, why should you test English?”
“It’s not a foreign company. They’re Chinese. What English do you need?”
“In future work, English is not used in many scenes, so there is no need to investigate English”
“Interviews build rockets, jobs turn screws.”
Naming variables is really hard
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
— Phil Karlton
There are only two big problems in computing, cache invalidation, and variable naming.
You can see how difficult naming is. I’ve seen a lot of bad naming, like these two:
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Data: This is a complete load of crap. It’s like you put a bunch of papers in a box and put a sticky note on it that says “stuff.”
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Data2: Orz.
Because the person who gives the name can only think of the word data. And as it happens, data can express anything.
Variable naming is actually an English ability. From this point of view, English is necessary.
Linear and three-dimensional thinking
Good Command of English, able to write more readable and maintainable code. That’s one reason to look at English proficiency.
But that’s not the point.
The test of the interview is English, not English itself; Rather, English proficiency can reflect other abilities and qualities of the candidate.
Before we understand this sentence, we need to introduce two kinds of cognitive thinking: linear thinking and three-dimensional thinking.
Linear thinking thinks that there is only one-way and linear causal relationship between things, and it fails to see the more diversified, complex and hidden causal relationship between them.
There are many examples of linear thinking in life:
Case # 1: Red wine is good for your health
People who followed and compared red wine drinkers and non-drinkers over time found a clear difference in their health levels: red wine drinkers were healthier. So red wine is good for your health.
Sure, there are some health benefits in red wine, but they’re not many and they’re not unique to it. Maybe if you eat a bunch of grapes, you’ll get almost as much of the active ingredient in red wine.
The real reason that red wine is beneficial to health is that those who have access to red wine tend to be richer and have higher social levels. With more money, people have a more comfortable and healthy lifestyle, better medical care, more free time, more sports and leisure, and greater health awareness. It was these, not the wine, that made them healthier. If these people drink water, tea and cola instead of red wine, they will also be very healthy.
Case 2: Social elite did well in sports in college
America’s elite, including corporate executives and politicians, are often the stars or even captains of their sports teams in college. Does this mean that the level of sports is important to enterprises and governments? What about making better business decisions with a better shooting percentage?
Of course not. In the university physical exercise, not only is a strong body, more important is the spirit of teamwork, hard-working spirit. The courage to face competition head-on. It is these psychological traits, rather than the sport itself, that help them become elite later in life.
Case 3: High incidence in remote areas
I recently read Daniel Kahneman’s book thinking, Fast and Slow, which also mentioned a case study.
Daniel Kahneman was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, the first psychologist ever to win the Nobel Prize in economics. Thinking, Fast and Slow is one of the most influential psychological books of our time. It examines irrational human behavior and is a true academic masterpiece.
I’ll share some of what I learned from Reading Thinking, Fast and Slow.
When they measured the incidence of kidney cancer in the United States, they found a phenomenon. Many sparsely populated areas have high rates of kidney cancer. What do you think when you hear a survey showing that a large percentage of kidney cancer occurs in sparsely populated areas? People began to look for reasons, many people say that sparsely populated places are not poor medical conditions? Are you eating the wrong food? Is there no physical examination and so on.
What are the facts? The fact is that the law of small numbers works. When a sparsely populated area has a small sample size, extreme results can occur. So maybe the mortality rate is high one year, and suddenly it’s very low next year. The sample size is too small to form an accurate statistic, and the law of small numbers is unknown to most people.
So those are examples of linear thinking in life.
Those who think English is rarely used at work, so there is no need to investigate, are typical of linear thinking.
Linear thinking tends to get bogged down in the local, unable to understand the world from a broad perspective, unable to find connections between things.
The other side of linear thinking is stereoscopic thinking. Think that everything is not isolated, but related to other things.
The lollapalooza effect is also what Charlie Munger’s book, Poor Charlie’s Bible, stresses.
If we can break through linear thinking and establish three-dimensional thinking mode, we will have a deeper understanding of the world.
Good English means a good student
Some people complain that Chinese students spend so much time learning English, but they seldom use it in their future work. Isn’t it a waste of time?
As far as I know, most companies don’t seem to be looking at English proficiency when hiring.
Maybe it’s because you don’t understand the nature of hiring.
Recruitment, in essence, is about finding the right people at low cost.
What is appropriate? Ability, ability, ability.
Just, how to reflect and judge a person’s ability?
How to judge a person’s ability quickly and comprehensively within one hour of interview? And make sure that he’s 100 percent qualified for the position and stays there for the next couple of years and is committed to the company?
I’d love to find one, but I don’t.
It’s impossible to interview 100% of the right people. We can only increase the probability as much as possible.
So how do you increase that probability? Extrapolate from history to the future.
If a person is good in the past, he is likely to be good in the future.
The question then becomes how to judge whether he was good in the past.
The answers begin to emerge: degrees, college transcripts, work experience, how often you change jobs.
English happens to be a basis for judging ability.
Passing Cet-4 or CET-6 shows that the student studied hard and did not neglect his studies when he went to college. A qualified and outstanding university graduate.
Since middle school, if a student does not study hard, he will soon fall behind in two subjects — English and math. The characteristic of these two courses is that if you miss one lesson, you can’t understand the rest of the lesson. Do not understand more no interest in learning, will fall further, and will eventually give up completely.
Compared with math and English, Chinese, politics, geography, history and so on, even if I miss a period of time, I will not have a big impact on the exam.
When companies recruit students, they require them to pass cet-4, not for The sake of English itself, but to ensure that applicants are qualified college students. English is acceptable, proving that she has studied hard in college.
When you go to college, you study hard. After graduation, the probability of a good job is also high; At work, I am also self-disciplined and capable of continuous learning.
If there is no other convenient and reliable method of screening, it is wise for companies to insist on this requirement.
conclusion
Hiring is a game of cost and probability.
Each candidate, for the enterprise, is the matching degree, is the probability.
Enterprises need to use the lowest cost, to find a high degree of match, high probability of qualified people.
Being good at English does not necessarily mean that one is truly excellent and qualified. It’s more likely to be excellent than those with poor English.
People who are good at English prove that they were excellent in the past and have a high probability of being excellent in the future.
It’s like having two raffle boxes, one with a 20% chance of winning and one with a 50% chance of winning. Which box would you smoke?
Maybe some people are not convinced, maybe 20% of the boxes win, but 50% of the boxes don’t. Although I did not study hard in college, BUT MY ability is very strong, the company lost me, is the loss of the company.
It may be unfair for you to be rejected by the company because of your poor English. But for the company, it doesn’t matter at all. What the company is looking for is someone who meets its requirements. It doesn’t matter if this guy fits the bill, if it’s John or Tom, if it’s you or someone else. Companies are looking for capabilities, not specific people.
And no company has any responsibility or obligation to be fair to any one candidate.
At the very least, you didn’t study English well at the beginning, which is a fact, you can’t blame others.
Last but not least, English is very important because it means whether you are good in the past. Represents the probability of passing in the future; Represents the possibility of being chosen now.
Our diligence and efforts, is to have the right to choose and be chosen.
However, in order to increase the probability of being selected even a little bit, it requires constant diligence, effort, self-discipline and learning.
After all, sometimes life decisions are made once or twice.
I am Van Gogh left Ear. I graduated from Beijing Institute of Technology and am now the chief architect of a financial consulting company. I once worked in the Middleware team of Alibaba. Immersed in the software industry for more than ten years, I believe that technology can change the world. Can you really write code?
Welcome to the public account “Left Ear Van Gogh”. Adhere to the output of technical dry goods, workplace experience and reading comprehension. Keep learning and growing with me for life.