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If an applicant is seeking a job that involves writing prose, it stands to reason that he or she ought to know and obey the rules of grammar. But what about computer programmers? And what about technicians? Little of these workers' value to a company comes directly from the words they write.
However, Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit and founder of Dozuki, two firms that specialize in creating instructional manuals, recently declared on the Harvard Business Review's HBR Blog Network, "I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar," and included all potential employees in his edict.
"Good grammar makes good business sense - and not just when it comes to hiring writers," Wiens said. "Writing isn't in the official job description of most people in our office. Still, we give our grammar test to everybody, including our salespeople, our operations staff and our programmers."
To Wiens, it's...