Re: High-Tech's Hiring-Firing Paradox

[Tom Campbell <tcampbell -at- WEATHER -dot- COM>]

Thanks, George Mena, for posting the San Francisco Chronicle article about companies that are hiring more people born outside of the U.S.

I realize the main thrust of the article was about whether we should worry about American workers getting laid off when people from other countries are earning degrees from prestigious American universities and getting hired to lucrative engineering & software jobs in the U.S.  I don't worry too much about that.  I just take it for granted that we live in a global marketplace.

I'm more interested in the points you bring up regarding U.S.-born technical writers working with engineers & software engineers from other countries.  Having had this opportunity myself, I have some observations.

It's important to communicate with people from other cultural backgrounds in a respectful way.  One little thing that will greatly help in this area is to LEARN THE PERSON'S NAME.  I know this sounds obvious, but it amazes me how seldom Americans make an effort to get the names of their foreign-born co-workers correct.  Years ago I worked with a very talented graphic artist whose first name was Zoila.  Almost everyone called her by her initials ("Z.T."), and she was too polite and good-natured to protest.  Those few who did call her "Zoila" usually mispronounced it (the "Z" is pronounced "S," and the "L" sounds like it looks, not as in "pollo," where the two L's sound like a "Y").  

When I meet someone I'll be working with, I always make it a point to ask them exactly how to pronounce their name.  And I repeat it back to them and ask them to say it again if necessary, to be sure I've got it right.  It's just infuriating to see somebody make a half-hearted effort to pronounce another person's name and then just give up and say "Well, OK, whatever.  Can we just call you Joe?"  (No wonder Americans have the world-wide reputation of being dumb, lazy, and selfish!)

Also we should be aware that people for whom English is a second language may read, hear, and even write English much better than they can speak it (just as is often the case with native English speakers who try to learn another language).  It's important to make a real effort to understand what they're saying, and NEVER to just smile and nod, pretending to understand.  Also we should refrain from mumbling or using slang until we're sure the person can understand us.

But I've also found that people from other countries often have better training in English than many of us native-born Americans!  They make speak with an accent, but often their diction and vocabulary can be excellent.

It's fun, too, to discover areas of commonality with people who were born far away.  Once, over coffee in the breakroom, I was chatting about music with a co-worker from India.  I was trying to tell her how much I enjoyed recordings by Ravi Shankar and the tabla player with whom he has frequently collaborated, but to my chagrin I couldn't remember the guy's name.  All I could remember was that his son's name is Zakir Hussain.  I felt a little better when my co-worker also couldn't remember the elder tabla player's name.  

Just then another Indian programmer walked by, and my co-worker said, "Hey, who's Zakir Hassain's father?"  Without missing a beat, he replied, "Alla Rakha," as nonchalantly as I might have answered if somebody had asked me "Who sang 'You Ain't Nothing But a Hound Dog," or "What color is a tomato?"*

Tom Campbell


*The answers, of course, are "Big Mama Thornton" and "Green, red, yellow, purple, or black."