

Never, Ever Compromise: Hiring For Culture Fit - yarianluis
http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/04/never-ever-compromise-hiring-for.html

======
guylhem
This is weird to read. What caught my eye:

"For an early stage, raw startup, your hiring focus should be on homogeneity."

then right away:

"You should be encouraging a diversity of origins (gender, ethnicity, etc.)"

I don't really care about one side of the argument or another, (homogeneity,
heterogeneity) or even prejudices - but this seems inconsistent.

If you are advocating cultural homogeneity, except for political correctness
or legal reasons (ie to avoid being sued by applicant you rejected because of
their gender or ethnicity), why do you argue for diverse origins ?

Be consistent with yourself - it's A or B.

If it's A and B you may not really have an argument.

And I would really, really like to see facts supporting either homogeneity or
heterogeneity. So far all I've seen are best described as case reports - no
real trials with enough samples to have a good statistical power. Make teams
of 100 persons, standardize on competence (SAT, whatever) then try and compare
different mix of gender or ethnicities and pick up the top performing mixes.
Do that multiple times. Then give a conclusion.

That's an argument I will be able to believe.

EDIT: some clarification - I don't care what anyone thinks/look like/believes
as long as the person can deliver more than it costs, but I'm willing to
consider that if conclusive evidence exists. The best I've read so far is a
positive effect of homogeneity towards cooperation against others
(parochialism).

EDIT2: to avoid statistical backslash, I realize that due to higher standard
deviation in small samples of a given population, underrepresented genders or
ethnicities may show a higher variance - hence the need to standardize
beforehand on competence to select test subjects over a threshold and reduce
this bias.

~~~
gruseom
It only looks like a contradiction because you omitted the part where he
resolves it. Here's the whole quote:

 _For an early stage, raw startup, your hiring focus should be on homogeneity.
You should be encouraging a diversity of origins (gender, ethnicity, etc.)
while discouraging a diversity in company values._

In other words: diversity of personal origins is good, divergence of company
values is bad. I wonder if you misunderstood what he means by "culture". He
doesn't mean the cultural background of each individual; he means the shared
values of the team they're joining. His argument is that having teammates who
share the same values about the work is so important that it should never be
compromised, at least in the early stage of an endeavor. I agree with that.

There's an objection to be made that company values can't actually be
separated from personal origins, because people with different backgrounds are
likely to want to handle the work differently.

~~~
guylhem
It is a contradiction for which no proof is offered (no, a reference to a
quora post doesn't count, sorry). It is not consistent.

I welcome any proof on any direction (diversity of personal origins is good,
divergence of company values is bad / diversity of personal origins is good,
divergence of company values is good / diversity of personal origins is bad,
divergence of company values is bad / diversity of personal origins is bad,
divergence of company values is good)

Here, I just don't see any (except repeating politically correct clichés)

Facts are usually stronger than a doctrine, however sweet or morally "better"
it may pretend to be.

If there are no facts, it's not even a theory but an hypothesis or worse-
someone wishing the word to be a certain way while it's not (and getting
burned in the process, and getting other people burnt too if they believe such
claims)

I don't "want to believe" in anything - not on HN. I just want to see facts,
i.e. anyone is free to advocate diversity, racism, sexism, whatever- but that
person would better have some solid facts to back such claims.

------
jayferd
<quote> [Inexperienced people] Work long hours. Inexperienced people make up
for inexperience with enthusiasm, and often don't have much of a life. This
does not necessarily make them more productive then experienced people, but
the enthusiasm and energy is often infectious and helps shape the company
culture. </quote>

If I'm reading this right, this is awful. Just awful. You want to hire
inexperienced people to "infect" the culture with a habit of working long
hours. I have a seriously bad reaction to this because I was that guy. I came
into a company, was super excited to work there, worked long hours like
everyone else, and all of a sudden I had no life outside of work. I don't plan
to do that again.

~~~
rachelbythebay
Knowing about this and deliberately exploiting it sounds mighty evil.

Let's see. First, you create a famously high bar for hiring. Make it seem like
it was a miracle anyone gets in. That way, once you're inside, you think you
got a hold of something extremely valuable and you're not likely to let it go.
Sunk cost fallacy and all that.

Next, go heavy on young people with no professional experience. They have
neither the work experience nor the sheer number of years walking the planet
to know when someone is taking advantage of them. They will be rather useful
to you until they finally realize what's going on. When they start waking up,
sour their milk and "manage them out".

Optimizing for people without families further ensures heightened commitment
to the company.

Repeat every year with a fresh batch of graduates. Profit!

------
alanctgardner2
I think "culture fit" makes this sound more specific than it is: it's mostly
about interpersonal relationships within the team, and enthusiasm for the
problem domain. For some reason the west-coast startup cargo cult seems to
think that every company needs to be a unique and beautiful snowflake which
offers niche perks and only hires (for example) ginger rock-climbers with
astigmatism who like Devo.

The fact of the matter is, half of this article is about the new employee
getting along with your team. This doesn't necessarily require common
interests, it's just about having similar communication styles, and to an
extent values. The beer test is an excellent way to establish this.

The other half is about hiring enthusiastic recruits, especially the 'green
and keen' fresh out of college, who are willing to sacrifice their lives to
ship. I personally don't agree with sleeping under your desk every night, or
living in a perpetual crunch, but I'm lucky enough to have an interesting,
challenging job where I want to work on related projects at home. If an
employee is interested in the problem they're solving, they'll be more
productive, regardless of whether they spend 8 hours or 12 hours at the
office.

In short, I like all of the content in the article, but 'culture fit' makes it
seem like a mystical x factor, when it's really common sense.

------
pnathan
Hire inexperienced people? That is a recipe for making old mistakes
experienced people would know to avoid. It's also totally crass to hire
newbies because they will put in overtime.

If you want to build a culture, build a culture people _want_ to buy into,
even old hands.

------
luser001
This whole article should have been prefaced with a giant 72-pt IMHO and
suffixed with a 72-pt YMMV.

I was amazed at recommendations #4 and #5: reward somebody for "fitting in"
etc. (!!!!!!!)

I highly recommend Andy Grove's "High Output Management" if you're really
interested in building a high-performance organization. It's a highly
objective book: don't waste time on voodoo like "Intriguingly, in a "social"
environment, the candidate would often show more of their "true colors".
Especially if beer was involved."

~~~
SkyMarshal
Good recommendation, ordered. Recently this obsession with 'culture' among
startups has been sounding more and more cargo-cultish. Grove is the real deal
though.

~~~
jisaacstone
Ha! that is true. In my experience 'culture' means 'drinks microbrews and
knows _all the memes_ '

~~~
snogglethorpe
Also, hipster glasses and at least one antique leather armchair in which you
regularly sip your obscure single-malts....

[I totally love github as a service, their employees seem genuinely cool, and
they apprently know what they're doing, but the pictures they post for every
new hire are absolutely _hilarious_ ... I think I could never work there
because I just don't have all the necessary accessories...]

------
sweettea
I recently got a job without the beer test, and I'm glad. I understand the
need to fit in, and I genuinely think I do, but I, like many others, don't
deal well socializing with enormous groups of strange people. If subjected to
a beer test, it'll be super-painful for me, and I'll be ordinately quiet ---
because what social situation wants an outsider to dominate the conversation?
But going out for beer with one or two people, or having a conversation with
one or two people in the office in a traditional interview setting, is a much
more natural social situation and I believe shows much better how I'll get
along with the company.

------
troebr
_hire inexperienced people because they will put in overtime and will be more
willing to accept your culture_ -> hire inexperienced people because they are
more easily influenced. I don't think I would be a culture fit in the company
of someone who thinks like that. A job should be beneficial to both the
employee and the employer, and more experienced hires would be able to point
out dysfunctions instead of blindly accepting anything (see the monkeys and
the ladder experiment - whether it is true or not, it illustrates the point).

------
genericresponse
This article sounds distinctly like a list of excuses for why your company
isn't equal opportunity. A huge list of rationalizations about why you chose
the white, young, middle to upper-middle class, guy over other candidates.

------
motters
Cohesive, insular cultures are more likely to suffer from group-think and to
tolerate bad behavior.

This article seems like bad advice because when everyone thinks alike it's
more difficult to spot and correct mistakes.

------
Torgo
Will I fail the post-beer test if I don't care for drinking culture? What if
I'm a Muslim, Mormon, or just a teetotaller? Why do these places seem to have
the same beer-culture?

I think this is a new thing? I didn't see it so prevalent ten years ago, now
it seems like every conference, every workplace enjoys imbibing tons and tons
of beer.

------
freework
I think the problem is that with Silicon Valley startups, failure is the norm.
Instead of optimizing for maximum skill when hiring, they optimize for maximum
"bro-ness". You take that 7 figure investor money, get yourself a swanky
downtown San Francisco office, and spend the days drinking beer with your
"startup bros" until the money runs out. Then you write your "why my startup
failed" postmortem blog post, then start the process all over again.

------
pacaro
I understand the point, but there is a challenge that has to be met,
particularly if you are trying to build a consumer product. It is very easy to
fall into the "Inmates are Running the Asylum"[1] trap, the product looks good
within the team and to like minded customers but is missing something (or
everything) for the broader customer base. This lead an entire industry to
spend decades building products that only techies could love...

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-
Products/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-
Products/dp/0672326140)

------
tewolde
No! No. No.

Find what you need, and hire for talent...all else is smoke and noise!

------
KevinMS
This is satire, right?

~~~
ucee054
Some people actually buy into this kind of nonsense.

Example: <http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/11/28/kpmg.mp3>

------
ucee054
_Early on, you want to hire people with common perspectives and goals who are
all pulling in the same direction. (Note: this does not mean want you want
clones or group think)._

That's EXACTLY what it means. Someone following these ideas will end up hiring
sheep. What a stupid article.

