
“Culture fit” craze is turning tech from innovators to ideological fiefdoms - emblem21
http://imgur.com/a/v4YBd
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nwah1
At a place I worked not too long ago, they fired a guy after two days because
he was clearly an extremely huge asshole and stoner, and the reason they gave
was that he wasn't a good culture fit. But it was just a polite way of saying
that they didn't want an unkempt, disorderly, drug addict.

Although, I must say, he did seem to be a fairly decent developer, as far as I
could tell by talking with him over two days.

~~~
jameskegel
What happened to those who screened/interviewed/hired this person? Were they
spoken to about how this slipped under the radar?

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nwah1
We talked about it, and we all agreed that his appearance and demeanor at the
interview was much different than his appearance on his first day.

He actually missed his start day, without notice, now that I remember, and
started late.

I looked up his music scene and realized he'd been at a rave in another state
all weekend, and was clearly hungover and irritable.

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revo13
Coming from 4 years at a startup as emp#1 and looking again in Austin
(engineering), if I hear one more time that "they loved you but didn't think
you would be a good fit" instead of a real reason for missing the cut, I am
going to go nuts.

~~~
michaelbuddy
Not a good fit is PC language. Best way to get along these days apparently.
I'll translate.

"They Loved You" (No they were lukewarm at best but they're being polite at
this point.)

"Wouldn't be a good fit" (Not their responsibility to point out your flaws,
some of which were subtle, some were obvious so keeping it brief and to the
point. We know we can find somebody better or already have.)

~~~
revo13
Yeah, I know the foundation for it. It is just an irritating process (I know,
stating the obvious) that should be better. Both the company and applicant
invested time/money in exploring a relationship, and candidates shouldn't be
left with a brutally ambiguous result. Even if it takes 5 more min in a
debrief and some possible hurt feelings, the company should respect candidates
enough to spend that time and help them understand the specific reason(s) as
to why they aren't getting the job. I really want to know, was it my salary
reqs, my quietness, my loudness, I looked wrong at the VP of Eng/CEO?

This applies to onsite interviews obviously, not initial phone screens.

~~~
pwfisher
The company defaults to polite silence to avoid legal liability. They can't
risk saying anything which might be construed as discrimination against a
protected class.

~~~
Redoubts
I kind of wonder if "not a culture fit" could be construed that way if you
were an underrepresented minority. It's pretty close to existing coded
language.

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chollida1
I wrote about why we got rid of cultural fit interview here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9851060#9853911](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9851060#9853911)

a little over a year ago. The short answer was that we couldn't find a single
thing that this interview helped with.

And since then I have yet to hear anyone give a reasonable answer as to what a
cultural fit interview provides.

I mean by the time you are ready to hire someone, they've met the team and the
team has already approved. We've already given them the hard sell on why they
should work for us, infact this is what I spend half our initial phone screen
doing, just selling the company.

Almost all cultural fit interviews seem to be a form of asking: "Can we figure
out if this person will dedicate all their waking hours to our company", and
that's just really sad.

~~~
jmcdiesel
The "culture fit" shouldnt be an interview all its own, its should be
something that every person they speak to considers.

Speaking only technically will give you that person's tech skills... that
person's non-tech skills and nuances will actually have a huge effect on their
performance and that of those they work closely with.

Something powerful comes out of that - you learn intuitively what a person's
true priorities are, and they do the same. You get a "feeling" about them and
how they will incorporate into the team. those are just as important

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ironchef
I think this can be true in some cases; however, it's also nice to look for
things like: * Does this person think they're above grunt work / taking out
the trash? * Does this person work better in a position where they take on
responsibilities as they see fit or would they rather have work given to them?

Neither one of those are captured in the "data-driven" hiring process;
however, they are key in our particular company's culture. And yes... years of
experience can be dismissed simply if the candidate thinks they're above
everyone else.

~~~
vonmoltke
I think those are more about professionalism and work style than culture.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I think those are more about professionalism and work style than culture.

"professionalism" is one particular set of features of culture (and different
people use the term to describe slightly different feature sets, but each
definition _is_ a set of culture features), and "work style" is a synonym for
workplace culture.

~~~
vonmoltke
> "work style" is a synonym for workplace culture

Only if a workplace chooses to enforce a particular style. Otherwise, it is an
individual variation that a good organization tries to work with.

On professionalism, I think it comes down to how you use the word "culture".
Yes, professionalism is an aspect of culture in the larger sense, but one
which I think should transcend the cultures of individual organizations. Most
of the surface variation in professionalism are the little things that vary by
geographic location and industry and should not vary by company.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Only if a workplace chooses to enforce a particular style.

No, the actual work style practiced in the workplace is an element of
workplace culture whether or not a uniform style is enforced (whether or not a
uniform style is enforced is, itself, an element of the workplace culture.)

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strathmeyer
I've studied programming my whole life. But somehow someone I've never met
before can decide I don't know how to program after fifteen minutes of
questions. Guess I need to go memorize the meaning of 'polymorphism' again.

~~~
superswordfish
You don't need the Oxford Dictionary definition, but any decent engineer who
has touched an object-oriented language should be able to explain what
polymorphism is. Come on.

~~~
strathmeyer
Sure, it's just difficult to think all that way back after I've talked about
the operating system I designed and implemented. Don't worry, though, now I
just get rejected for $12/hr data entry jobs. Come one. I've been suicidal for
almost a decade and a half, now. How come nobody has any clue how to get
programming jobs? Why doesn't that bother other programmers?

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ikeyany
I completely understand what he means, but his disdain would have a better
effect if he compared the trendy "we don't take ourselves too seriously--see?
Nerf wars and ping pong!" culture to the drab, grey, cubicle-dominated culture
of the past.

Companies take note: be a fun place, but protest too much about your culture
and risk becoming a weird hive-minded cult.

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bbctol
I can't imagine that this issue doesn't manifest even more seriously when it
comes to race and gender bias.

~~~
trhway
being a white male (thanks, God!) i can't say for race and gender, yet it is
definitely a way to filter out by age (i'm 44)

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justinzollars
I've seen very qualified candidates passed over for people with no discernible
skill because of "culture fit".

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scott_s
A longer-form take on this issue: "Inside the Mirrortocracy"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7930430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7930430)

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hkmurakami
Hasn't this always been the case? Companies that carry on the "80s SV hardware
startup mantra" (AAPL, along with repeat founders in semi conductor sector)
are definitely fiefdoms that reflect the character of the founder.

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jmcdiesel
I mean, the creator of these seems like someone I wouldn't want to work with.
There is a lot to be said about creating a culture in a company, and grooming
said culture, and making sure to preserve aspects of it you see as powerful
for your employees...

The "culture" of an open source tech shop is vastly different than a typical
.Net tech shop - the clients are different, the dress codes are often more
strict in the .net shops, the hierarchy and "feel" is far more corporate...
Those are different worlds, and trying to stick someone from one into the
other inevitably doesn't work well... at least not optimally..

~~~
EliRivers
On the other hand, taking someone from a typical .Net tech shop and putting
them into an open source tech shop suddenly gives that open source tech shop a
whole new way of thinking; here's a person who is going to approach problems
differently, and has a different set of experiences. By not hiring someone who
thinks the same as everyone already there, the company becomes stronger.

We should hire for culture-UNfit. Do you think differently? Are you going to
give me options nobody else here would have thought of? Do you have experience
with technologies that nobody else here does? Are you going to be able to fill
in some of the blind spots and vulnerabilities that would stay open if I just
hired someone identical to everyone else here?

Hiring another person just the same gets me the ability to do a little more of
the same. Hiring someone different gets me something new.

~~~
romanovcode
Ugh, nowadays typical .NET dev is well-aware of what is open source because,
FYI .NET is open sourced.

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EliRivers
Tell you what, replace .NET with anything you like. You've focussed on the one
thing I said that's meaningless and utterly superfluous to the point.

~~~
romanovcode
I just don't like the outdated stereotype, that's all.

