I'm a native English speaker. When I started at my company it was English-only (at least as far as I saw). Over the past several years we've been doing more work with Europe and around the globe. Even more recently, people in Europe have been given leadership position on various projects that impact the US. It could be my own English-bias talking, but I think things would be going more smoothly if everything was done in a single language, English being the logical choice. Everyone working on the projects and at the company speaks English (as a first or second language), and I have occasionally received emails in French. Some of these are automated system messages, and whoever set them up wasn't thinking about the global audience. A vast majority of employees don't speak French, so most people lose the context when this happens. That's a problem. Even in our offices in India, I'm told that they use English in the office, because that's the only common language they all share, since there are so many languages and dialects in India; there isn't one local languages they can count on. English does seem to be the lingua franca for the world, especially in technology, at this point. This seems to be the case online, as I've read from various people over the years, and I also see it when I travel. One person will speak German, another Korean, and they both switch to English so they can speak to each other to ask directions or whatever it may be.

I recommend thinking about this exactly like the aviation industry. The language of the skies is English only. Thus all operational correspondence is in English, all training occurs in English, all logs are in English, all commands and instructions within the cockpit are in English, all preflight checks are in English. Pretty much everything that can be recorded and/or necessary to do the job is English only.

Despite that unrelated conversation among pilots can still be local language. Discussions among air traffic control off the radio can still be local language.

With regards to software all things related to work and product should be English only without exception. Things related to code theory outside of the product or personal education can be local language. That provides the flexibility to do what is most comfortable for self-learning but ensures there exists a fixed standard for work.

By the way, English became the language of the skies for safety reasons, not for communication purposes. Forcing English usage cuts through cultural dimensions that inhibit more honest expression by less senior people.

Non native English speaker here. Been working using English only for over a decade, to the point of using my own native language to discuss technical topics (either at the conceptual/product level or at the very low level) feels non-natural and uncomfortable. I haven’t worked in software engineering using my mother tongue ever (because I’ve always been an immigrant).

I am working as a software developer and speak English, Danish (both non-native) and German on the job. I do not recognize the problem you describe at all. If there is confusion, it usually stems from the classics: missing or unclear requirements, bad or non-existent communication, implicit assumptions about what everyone should know and so on.

I think so.

I spend a year at a research institution in Germany where English was commonly used (lots of people worked there from all over the world but especially the E.U..) but I might have been the only native English speaker.

All the time at talks I saw people struggle to understand things because English was the second or third language of both the speaker and the listener.

It’s an unexamined phenomenon for many reasons not least the people involved think they are really smart and would have their feelings hurt if they knew how bad it was.

No. My experience is that English is a great language for hiding ignorance behind technobabble and buzzwords. You claim that "conceptual innovation can’t possibly stem from conceptual confusion." It sounds reasonable, but honestly, wtf does it mean? :) My experience is that bilingualism is advantageous because it forces you to think and reason in multiple languages. Simply put, if you can explain something in multiple languages then you probably know that subject better than someone who can only explain it in one language.

It does help and is beneficial, but I don't think you are realistic in your expectations. It may help you think English.

Having a global team doing English first for every aspect of the company life is good and helps a lot, but hardly a pure solution you seem to aim at. If you accept it and start doing personal notes, tasks, code etc. in English, you will notice how easy it is to work on that instantly with the team, without any preparation, convert automatically into docs or presentations etc. It helps to find common understanding and push prototypes faster, as some decisions and tweaking doesn't have to be made: English is the default for all. If your speakers are NOT perfectly fluent it may have a side benefit - you need to boost your overall clarity.

For instance. if I struggle with pronunciation (especially the r's) I weight every word carefully and have to slow down and keep it shorter than I'm used to. I add two takes (sentences/examples) to complex topics to make sure I use different phrasing to be fully understood.

But English is also not immune to local drift (domain specific language, regulatory enforced language or company/topic specific). It's also insanely confusing language that does rely on intuition or axioms that... many don't know. Double meanings, extremely high reliance on context, phrasal verbs, inconsistent pronunciation and spelling, US date format, written text (l, 1, i; 1, 4, 7, A; dot and comma as separators). How many is, respectively, 1m, 1M, 1MM? ... It heavily depends who you talk to. Add to the mix a fact that native speakers often suck at both clear communication AND understanding (in my experience, by being completely unaware they use grammar, accent and vocabulary specific to their region, while having poor ability to understand other regions) and you again end up in a somewhat muddy communication. Damn, even emphasis is different depending on region. Awkwardly, In Polish "akcent" means literally "emphasis" in sentence. In English (used by actual native speakers) emphasis in sentence is actually shifted to words next to the ones other nations find intuitive. So it's confusing as it stresses "wrong" words but is such a gentle thing that most people will never even consider investigating.

Domain specific language (or local, or company specific...) will still be a thing and it's not always a bad thing. You will keep translating English to English. You will create simple phrases that are clear and precise, but will clash with your users using intuition instead of documentation (we can't really blame them here) and misinterpret your carefully standardized phrasing anyway.

The easiest example I came across this year was when I started working with lots of Germans. I noticed they used Productive to indicate Production IT system. I found it weird and incorrect, as productive already has a different meaning. Germans I asked about it agreed, but said they don't really see it as an issue.

But then I realized I'm not in finance any more. We have PRODUCTION. Physical machines and people who produce physical object in a highly organized way. So Productive is much safer and precise word in this context.

You will always have that domain specific language and will have to translate between teams, even when you thing you use same language. It happens on any level of complexity and you have to either be constantly vigilant or just let it go.

Disclaimer: I never worked in a really small company/startup. I don't code much, more of an admin/DevOps/solution architect. I participate in code reviews and do automation, CI/CD, IaC, Infra design and support, sometimes help to design the business product.