My English is not perfect. Why would you hire me?

What makes a good developer?

Firstly, algorithmic thinking - a skill of building solutions by using logic chains where each element is a step on our way to the final result. Sorry if that sounds too boring.

Secondly, willingness to learn. Yes, programming is not for people who hadn't read a single book after they graduate the university. We, developers, read a lot. At least, we should.

Thirdly, a good programmer should understand the value of their work. You have to ask yourself: "Does the result of my work help my customer to improve their business? Does it bring a profit to those who paid my invoices? Are they satisfied with my service at all?"

You could notice, there's nothing about perfect English. Why? Because it really doesn't matter in the modern IT industry. I know a lot of great developers from Russia, Ukraine, China, South Africa and other places. They're all amazing guys who code like heroes despite their English skills are not perfect. When they work with clients from the United States, they mostly use text chat for communication. So do I. It helps everyone (including developers and their clients) to save the key moments of the discussion, which, on the other hand, is really hard to do when you have a long voice call.

Yeah, sometimes I confuse articles (a and the) because my native language doesn't have them. Sometimes I use wrong forms of English verbs. I could say a phrase in "past simple" when it supposed to be in the "past perfect" (and vise versa). My clients find that to be fine so I'm not afraid and I never was afraid to take the risk of braking the grammar because I always knew: my clients understand me perfectly. Or maybe "perfect"? Who cares!

That's the most important thing in the business: we have to understand each other. Poor verbal English doesn't make me a bad developer and it doesn't stop me from getting the job done. As the practice showed, language barrier in the software development is not that scary. It might be really scary in other industries though.

So, getting back to the title, why would you hire me? Of course, no pressure. You may hire who you want and it shouldn't necessarily be me. What I want to say by this article is that the programming skillset (so-called "hard skills") means much more than ability to talk like a native. That's gonna be another huge trend for 2020s.

I'd appreciate if you share your thoughts on the subject of this article. Seriously, drop a line. If my English skills allow me I will respond, LOL :D