A friend shared a job posting that mentioned it required an “advanced level of English”. I assume they are looking for tech workers that are into comparative literature studies. I saw a posting today asking for a “native or near-native speaker”. That feels like someone is saying the quiet part loud. This may shock some, but a lot of people who learned English as their first language are terrible at communicating clearly in English.
Being able to communicate your thoughts clearly, when speaking and writing, is important—probably the most important thing you’ll do at work. If I am being generous, that is what these statements want to say. But to frame that in terms of nativity seems both unfortunate and foolish.
At Datawire, the first place I worked after graduating, everyone on the development team besides myself learned English as a second language. They were a great team of developers, who taught me so much and did amazing work. Communication is not about everyone having the same accent. Communication is about creating shared understanding between people.