There's also a big difference between being able to just speak English, and being employable in a job that focuses on use of English as a skill... like writing a TV show or a book
Nobody, at least nobody who is thinking straight, would claim that someone who can speak English, particularly one who can do so fluently, doesn't have immense knowledge and skill in that area. It may not be an economically valuable skill due to the ubiquity relative to the need, but that, again, is something else entirely.
right, I totally get how English would help getting a job. I thought the post implied that it was a requirement for citizenship, which seemed odd since no one would speak English at birth anyway.
Honestly this seems pretty valuable. Non-native English speakers can get the tone wrong in writing pretty often, and that can sometimes make the difference between whether you get a job or whether you get properly recognized for your work.
Developer jobs need strong English, not native English. And with remote work becoming more of a thing they'd need strong written English, which is an easier threshold for lots of foreigners to clear.
Lawyers were mentioned directly in your grandparent comment. Sales and athletics also easily show at least that much variation from person to person. Business owners show much, much more variation than that, even if you restrict the field to very similar businesses. Researchers show variation similar to business owners (i.e. mind-bogglingly high).
You can easily construct differences of larger magnitude for what you might think of as "simple" jobs like telephone receptionist; a fluent english speaker is going to be more than 10x as productive in that job, assuming they're supposed to do business in english, than someone who can barely get by, and probably billions of times more productive than someone who can't speak english at all. There are a lot of Chinese people out there whose highest ambition is to "work in an office". I've met some of them! Most will never achieve that goal, because they don't have the requisite skills.
Most people who don't speak english won't apply for a job answering a telephone in english (but a lot of them will! This is exactly the kind of customer service representative everyone has grown to hate). I'd like to see some software job openings that specified a skill set, and were willing to hire people with that skill set. That doesn't seem to be the direction people are headed in, though...
But most native English speakers, or any language speakers for that matter,
don't think about what makes an overqualified person to work below their
skill level.
Most of the world doesn't speak English as a primary language. So, I can't imagine it's that big of an advantage in the worldwide market. Instead, there's a certain bar that can be reached by someone without even a 20 year head start.
For example, if I tried to get a programming job in the Ukraine without being able to speak a lick of Russian, I'd be laughed out of the office regardless of how good my English is.
The only time I can see it really mattering is perhaps in the US and UK, due to racist assholes who judge you by your accent instead of your capability.
Also, this may sound weird, but jobs speaking english can pay better than programming jobs, which will cut down on the number of english-speaking programmers.
Yes, and obviously OC speaks English fluently as well.
I'm not suggesting rural German farmers should start authoring novels in English.
I'm suggesting that someone who A. already knows how to competently (I hope) write novels in one language and B. is fluent in a second language should perhaps consider blending the two if they are not finding enough demand for their chosen occupation in their native tongue.
I realize this analogy is a little bit strained, but this would be like me saying, as someone that has known Python for 10+ years, I should not attempt to compete with the JS programmers who have been doing JS for 10+ years because I've only been working with JS for about 2 years. But obviously I don't think that way and I don't behave that way, because I want to make a living in my chosen profession. So I follow the demand, and where my skills are in need of improvement, I improve them.
It's not like you would just automatically get more money because you speak another language; you have to go work somewhere where they need you to do so.
In most places it wouldn't be hard to just declare that the workplace is English-speaking.
The problem is that if you want to attract non-local talent, it's harder to attract them somewhere where they'll have trouble with day-to-day life. English-speaking countries have a big advantage here: no matter what nationality a professional has they probably speak English well enough to be comfortable living there.
As another poster mentioned there are cities where the overall English proficiency is so high that it matters less (Stockholm, Berlin, Amsterdam, ...)
not if those jobs entail good written or even oral communication skills. Native English speakers have a huge leg up on Indians and Eastern Europeans in this regard.
For example, I imagine Coca-Cola is willing to pay more to have the person writing their ad copy be someone who has been immersed in American culture from birth.
A BA in creative writing. That could be of tremendous help to lot of businesses worldwide.
English is the international business language but unfortunately at least two-thirds of the world struggles to communicate correctly. Just as US outsourced mundane work in operations and computing, US & UK can support businesses elsewhere with their spoken language at home. There is a huge opportunity here.
Are you kidding me? I barely speak english (native speaker) and I didn't have that much trouble landing a gig. Most people are willing to ignore most of the nonsense I speak as long as I produce a bit of work now and again.
English language, maybe? Obviously a lot of those other countries have very high numbers of English speakers, but most good jobs still require you to speak the native language.
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