> Liking it is not in your job description.

Of course it is. Culture is very important to one's job. In fact, if you don't like you're job, you're not going to do a good job. Some companies make millions off of that premise (see Bonusly).

I actually completely agree with the idea of prose being written alongside technical requirements, but the work environment (and your tone) sound god-awful.

And for what it's worth, I'm a gamer.

Back then educators and technical writers knew about pervasive passive voice writing problems. Brad Cox (Objective-C) ran our library and formalized onboarding. These were dark ages. Blog writing was yet to be. We walked people through "Dynamics of Software Development" and handfuls of shorter articles during lengthy onboarding. We shared examples of good writing. Project kickoff automaton was still instruction based and tarball then. We ran an internal early "best practices" Wiki to let people write more. We worked in groups on special projects more than task fulfilment. Group composition was important to clients. Our developers often shared our office space with clients on daily or weekly bases. We did a good job of doing a good job possible for that era. [Edits: typos]

Nah. Sounds like you fired everyone who didn't drink the Kool-Aid, then told yourself that whoever remained was smarter than those who'd left.

I think that's short-sighted because if smart, clever people don't enjoy working for you they can and will find work elsewhere. Net result: you have to spend a lot of money and time hiring yet more smart, clever people, and so on.

Can't argue for those results, but I wonder who decided "who could not write English"? Some other effect may be at work... e.g, perhaps having people who thought and communicated in compatible styles.