{"id":2800,"date":"2013-09-25T18:59:39","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T23:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=2800"},"modified":"2013-09-25T18:59:42","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T23:59:42","slug":"english-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2013\/09\/25\/english-rules","title":{"rendered":"English rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read:\u00a0Unseen gap in ecosystem, and techies in their cocoons<\/a>. English is brought up as an issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

English is the medium of communication. You can code in whatever computer language exists, but if you can’t write your weekly reports, you can’t write commit messages, you can’t write proper comments in your code and you can’t communicate with the rest of your team via email, you have failed at communication.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malaysians can excel if they improve their English. Period. You learn English in school but its not enough. I’ve seen Malaysian Computer Science syllabi that teaches English at university level. Apparently it is not enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is a policy decision. The government is choosing to push their agenda forward by ensuring that the people cannot converse in English. English is like teaching the man to fish. As long as you are given fish, you are going to be dependent on the ruling regime.<\/p>\n

English is key. If you can’t get your message across, you will destroy whatever pitchdeck you have.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So are non-English speakers are severely undervalued? No. Not even in a team of non-English coders. Let’s say they all speak Bahasa Malaysia. When they hit a problem, can they solve it by Googling it? Can they read documentation in another language and comprehend it? (Note: this is different if your team of coders speaks Russian, Japanese, Korean, etc. where there’s plenty of local language content being created).<\/p>\n

At a previous company where we hired people from over 30 countries, and 70% of the people worked at home, what we did was pay for English language lessons for employees that couldn’t communicate in English. You were hired on the basis that you were a good coder, but you also had to complete English to be able to communicate with everyone involved.<\/p>\n

I’ve taken this lesson to heart. Anytime I’m consulting with a company where the level of English is subpar, I ensure that the key people get tutored in the language. Not only does it help them grow, it helps in my planned obsolescence – they are empowered to solve more by themselves as I teach them more technically, and as they can now find solutions themselves as they grok the English language.<\/p>\n

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