Luke S Crawford wrote: > Maybe I'm just bitter. Looking at my siblings, if I was born a few years > later, I'd probably have gotten my parents to foot the bill for a useless > history degree. (It's always been a hobby. Not particularly useful > for anything, of course, but fun.) would I have been happier making > coffee, arguing about Churchill and not getting a job that paid more than > retail before the age of 30? maybe. My grammar and pronunciation would > certainly be better than they are. But maybe not.
It's ironic how much grammar and spelling have come to count for, in the age of written (albeit electronic) communication. Many of the jocks who never even knew there was a typing lab at high school are now wishing they had tried it then. I don't know anyone who saw _that_ coming, even the prophets of the "paperless office" circa 1970. I once did a very formal process to determine just what was important, in a position I was hiring. Big function/skills matrix, several committee meetings. The kind of thing you might laugh at, only it actually achieved a good result. We decided that, even above technical knowledge, written English was the most important skill. (Not the only one. This was for an email/DNS admin in a worldwide company, dealing with colleagues invariably by email.) I had the audacity to suggest we make candidates respond to essay questions. The substance of the questions was technical, but (and we didn't tell them this) the evaluation hinged on their ability to communicate, even more than the answer itself. We hired a really good fellow, who worked out brilliantly. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
