This is a great post and so spot on. At some point in my career my 'review prep' (which was the time I spent working on my own evaluation of my year at a company) became answering the question, "Do I still want to work here?" I categorize my 'review' in four sections (which are each rated at one of five levels, needs improvement, sometimes meets expectations, meets expectations, sometimes exceeds expectations, or consistently exceeds expectations)
I start by reviewing how I'm being managed, I expect someone managing me to be clear in their expectations of my work product, provide resources when I have identified the need to complete jobs, can clearly articulate the problem I am expected to be solving, and can clearly articulate the criteria by which the solution will be evaluated.
Second I review my co-workers, using a three axis evaluation, can I trust what they say to be accurate/honest, can I count on them to meet their commitments, and are they willing to teach me when I don't understand something and conversely learn when their is something they do not know.
Third I review what level of support do I get to do my job. Am I provided with a workspace where I can get work done? Do have have the equipment I need to do what is being asked? Is my commute conducive to the hours required? And finally and most important, does this job allow me to balance work obligations and non-work obligations?
Fourth I review whether or not the company mission, ethics, and culture is still one that I wish to be a part of. Am I proud of the company's mission? Do I believe that the leadership will make ethical calls even if doing so would mean less profit margin? Can I relate to and am I compatible with the values that my co-workers espouse and the actions they take? (this is the "company culture" theme, is it still a company that fits me culturally)
A company that receives lower than a 3.0 rating I put on a 90 day "company improvement plan" (CIP). I bring issues to the leadership who are in a position to address the situations that I've found wanting and try to secure their commitment to change. If after 90 days they haven't been able to (if they choose not to they're done right away), then I "fire" the company and work to process my exit as expeditiously as possible.
I completely agree with this, but I often find that not everyone is in the same position to jump ship easily. Your attitude is often espoused by highly talented individual that could basically "work wherever".
A personal anecdote from someone I work with. "Alice" is a technical project manager at a large company. She's been with the company 8 years. While she's been in the role, expectations on her have been unclear, she's been promoted above her skill level due to bureaucratic incompetence and has been poorly mentored and led. Now she wants to leave, but how? She can't pass an interview for the other big companies in the region, and she doesn't have many growth or learning opportunities in her current position. Anywhere else is a huge pay cut. Is she happy? Nope. But digging herself out of the hole is a difficult task.
I am not disagreeing with you, but trying to communicate how the other half lives.
That is absolutely true, and in the original article there was a mention of folks trapped by US visa rules (leave your job, go back to your origin country).
To address your question though, if I were mentoring Alice I would ask which is more important to her, money or happiness? I learned long ago that it is useless to argue which is more important but it instructive to know in a person which one is key.
If she thinks happiness is more important, then the advice would be to interview elsewhere for a spot where she could be happy and ignore the salary if it is sufficient to her to live on. If she thinks money is more important, then the advice would be to focus her personal development toward being able to demand the salary that she wants to be paid.
The bottom line is that its easier to put up with poor working conditions when it is simply a stepping stone toward a different (ideally less poor) place.
I appreciate your practicality and empathy. I know I'd want to be mentored by you.
At least in her situation (Seattle) the pay difference might be drastic enough that it would be a deal breaker. There's also the issue of lifestyle creep, where you now have a mortgage you can only afford with the stressful/unhappy position you have.
To a certain point, money is happiness. Maybe the solution is checking out and fighting for reduced hours, while doing fulfilling things with the extra money you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else.
This comment is wonderful. As a company founder (and de-facto CEO), I'd love it if all of my employees did this every year (or even continuously!). I think I am going to steal this and make it part of an annual review process (once we get big enough to have those).
I did notice however that one thing that isn't your list is your salary. I'm curious if that was intentional or not?
Initially of course there was a minimum to meet my goals. My target was to be able to live somewhere, cover my cost of living, pay down my debts, and save 10% of my salary in long term savings.
Then as expenses started moving from being "in the future" to being "in the past" I was able to be more flexible on salary.
It helps that I have never equated what I was paid with how much I was "worth." It also helps that I don't have a lot of innate materialism. Although the funny story there is when I went back to Los Angeles to visit my old roommate from college I was showing him a fancy laptop that I had saved up for an bought. He had a pretty crap laptop but had recently bought a nice late model Mercedes Benz. Meanwhile, I had a 10 year old car at that point. We laughed at how the two different areas of California encouraged different status symbols.
"Is it worth being paid $X to work here?"
"What is the likelihood I'll be paid $X elsewhere"
And if they're paying a lot of money, I can tolerate the crappy working conditions -- I first heard of this a couple decades ago as "crying all the way to the bank."
A CEO that comes in to fix a company has a similar question. "It's going to be a nightmare to turn this company around, is the pay worth it?"
I went to exactly one company because of the pay. For me it was a horrible choice, when my only motivation for working somewhere is the paycheck, I don't do my best work. Since that experience I've turned down big offers from companies where I knew from talking to them that they would not score well on my evaluation.
In the long term its better for me and for them that we don't have to go through the dance of 'why aren't you giving us more?' and the ultimate resolution will always be us parting ways.
Interesting. I'm asking this question myself right now (crappy management+high stress but good pay/stock options). Of course the $ amount to satisfy 'worth it' differs for each person. Can you share your personal experience? How did you go about answering this question of 'is it worth it'?
So a large percent of people have a crappy job and work with crappy people and have crappy bosses. The last century of management still hasn't solved that issue, so it's likely going to be an issue for the next century.
I ask myself these questions:
1. Do I have a life outside of work? "Yes" is a good thing. But "No" is not a deal breaker.
2. Is my identity of myself too entwined in the corporation? If "yes" it's time to do things entirely unrelated to work. They're paying me to do work, not sit around and stew how unfair they're treating me after all the loyalty I've shown them.
3. Are the people there decent human beings that don't know how to manage, or are they back stabbing assholes?
The former is far more forgivable than the latter. Once the culture of back-stabbing starts, you're not gong to fix it ever.
4. Are the hours you're working actually making a difference? IOW have you been told to work 60 hours a week on a project that got canceled? This one is rough, because you're not getting those hours back, nor are you going to get to get a bonus for working hard on a canceled project. At what point did it become clear things weren't working?
5. What does my job enable me to do that I couldn't do without it? Expensive hobbies or travel?
6. Is work/life balance a two way street? "Yes" awesome. Again a "No" is not necessarily a deal breaker. Many people have jobs they need to be on call for or stay late for.
7. Am I growing? Am I learning how to deal with difficult people? Or is this a wasted amount of energy?
8. How long does it take me to reset from "anger" and "frustration" to calm and productive? If I can't leave in the evening and forget about work then something's wrong.
> How long does it take me to reset from "anger" and "frustration" to calm and productive? If I can't leave in the evening and forget about work then something's wrong.
I think it's worth noting that this one really has nothing at all to do with the job. Not to trivialize it at all; it's hard work to change your mind, but it's entirely within your court to learn how to recognize and work with your mental state like this. Therapy and meditation are two useful tools for that.
I use this as a metric. I like to think I'm a reasonable person in things I ask or told to do. I've worked in places where frustration was low and people were authentic and honest.
If something is wrong I ask myself if I need to reset my expectations or is what is happening very atypical?
Feelings are intuitive, and should be used that way. If something feels not right or not good, I tend not to want to bury them, but rather explore them.
It's important to keep in mind that organizations are dynamic and can change significantly in less than a year, even while keeping 95% of the same people. If there is one person making everyone's lives miserable then it may be worth sticking it out. In my own experience, people that were the most antagonistic or abusive toward their colleagues were also the closest to leaving the organization, either due to ambition, dissatisfaction, or personal illness/death.
I've seen this posed the other way.
"How much money would it take to have me quit immediately?"
On bad days, a grand or two would do it. But I guess this a combination of both love/hate for your job and any current financial commitments..
The problem is a pay bump usually only motivates you for so long. Once you are above a threshold and don't have to worry about empty pockets (so you meet a subjective minimum standard), every additional $ might motivate for a period and then the effect is weak or gone. And then you need another pay bump to motivate you.
On the other hand horrible managers, colleagues, or general work conditions will grind you every day, long after the effect of that pay bump wears off. Bad working conditions of any kind are far more effective at dragging your spirit down than money is effective at pulling it up.
If the money doesn't really matter all that much to you then I suppose some people wouldn't be willing to sacrifice their happiness once their basic needs and wants are met.
Amazing; this is just about how I approach it, except I have a bit more slack for the "CIP": 90 days is not a long time at many organizations larger than a certain size (say, about 100 people). I'm generally content as long as progress is being made to improve at a reasonable pace, and few or no regressions occur.
To be fair, the only time I saw a complete reversal of state in a short period of time was during the dot com implosion. The CEO at the company just lost it (he was under a lot of stress), and the working conditions went from meets to needs improvement remarkably quickly.
And its possible to have one aspect being wonderful to compensate for another aspect which is not so great. For example the company mission might suck but you really like your manager and your co-workers.
This is excellent. We should all try to do something like this.
The only time I've stopped an interview and told them "good luck but I'm out" is when I realised they're a hot-desking joint. I mean, sure there's is a price point at which I'll hot-desk, but strangely (since hot-desking is always about saving money no matter what other bollocks they dress it in), nobody's met it.
Is this something you've always done or only something you've done as you've gained higher level positions? I'm imagining that compensation is always at some minimum satisfactory level as well (and it must be rather high unless you're wealthy or bought a home decades ago or live in some really LCOL area?). Do you only work at places that you truly want to work at from the get go?
I can't imagine implementing this at an IC level at a startup. (Which is where I've been mostly) I could see it at some places where you could switch teams in a big company and not deal with those same people again. (thus not having to reinterview fully) I've found that people will change their ways very rarely unless your loss would ruin them. They're much happier to lose ICs than change.
Not always, when I got out of school I just went to work.
It helped that my wife was doing similar work (she was a computer programmer) and we compared notes about our jobs. Now I personally think getting married was a good choice in my life but for this conversation it was extremely valuable to have someone at a different company with whom I could be completely honest and exchange thoughts and ideas with. When my wife left Xerox for Tandem one of the books she got was called "Divorcing a Company." We both read it. I would say that book was when I stopped looking at companies being a "one way" kind of thing, either they want me or they don't.
The book's thesis was that you are in a relationship with the company you work for, it can be a good relationship, and it can be an abusive relationship. Looking at your choice to leave, and the things that keep you from leaving, as you might a divorce from a spouse, can put into perspective who is more "at fault."
I started thinking about why I was working at a company more critically at that point and then as time progressed developed a set of things that were the key factors in my job satisfaction.
To this point, "They're much happier to lose ICs than change." I agree completely. And that is why for me it was important to accept that people who won't see a reasonable request for what it is, are not worth wasting your time with. I doubt I will die thinking "I wish I had worked for an abusive boss longer" :-)
You can bookmark a comment on HN just as easily as a blog post. The "x hours ago" link in the comment header is a permanent link to the comment at the top of its own page, with its child comments below it.
I’m mid-way through my first experience with this. Some warning flags to add for anyone wondering if it’s them or you:
- You’re beginning to wonder if it’s you that’s crazy, despite successful previous roles.
- Their conversation has moved from “we” to “I” (or “you” and “us”).
- Your number of known unknowns (usually people- or business-based) suddenly spikes for no apparent reason
- Other people become (comically) formulaic in their response to questions.
- Feedback channels are quietly shut down because they’re “not really needed/too much process/etc”
I’ve started thinking of it as “professional gaslighting”, though its motivations may not be that sinister. My main mistake was not listening to that feeling that “something is wrong”. It’s surprisingly prescient.
I've had that (the gaslighting) happen to me so many times.
"You didn't do this assignment"
"Er, yes I did, here it is"
"Well, you didn't keep me up-to-date on it"
"Er, here are my weekly status report e-mails"
"But you know I don't read my e-mails"
Huh?
Another good one was the following: I had assigned one of my reports a task before going on vacation. During said vacation, my "manager" pulls said report from that task. Then afterwards dings me for that task not being completed.
Huh?
"We're not paying you your bonus"
"Why?"
"You have to know that yourself".
"I do not, and no, that's not how this works"
"I won't tell you"
Fortunately that was in Germany, so not just crazy, but also illegal.
I'm intrigued: What part of German labour laws make it illegal to not tell you why your employer does not give you a voluntary payment (e.g.: A bonus)?
As the other commenter wrote: bonuses are variable compensation that is part of the negotiated contract/wage, so not at all 100% voluntary.
So the employer can refuse to pay the bonus, but they have to give a valid reason. There are two levels to this: first, basic employment law, which places very hard limits on what you can do. Second, many companies (like this one) have agreements between the works council and the company, agreements that regulate these and other matters and become part of the employment contract, and are therefore also legally binding and enforceable.
In all cases, the employer has to have valid, provable performance-related reasons, these have to be communicated to the employee in a timely fashion and the employee given a chance to improve their performance.
In my case, management was so clueless that they knew none of this, they thought that bonuses were gifts they can shower on people they favour on a whim, just like a king to his subjects.
It was a bit of a rude awakening. :-)
They then tried to create a "case" retroactively, but apart from the fact that there was no case, it also wouldn't have mattered at that time.
Very interesting read. The article has a dead link to something Anton LaVey wrote called "NOT ALL VAMPIRES SUCK BLOOD!". I'm not a Santanist and had never read it before, but it's pretty spot on.
I'm self taught and have been doing this for 20 years. Most of that in a sort of survival serial startup mode that eventually stabilized into me having a clue around the time I turned 30.
I got hired a few years ago for a senior dev/architect/ops + engineering manager position at a ~5 person startup despite the fact that I was "a bad culture fit" because most of the staff was phds or masters level educated. At the time I found it really offensive that they'd even say that. The CEO said in the same breath "I think hiring you is the closest thing I'll get to cloning myself." Talk about mixed signals!
As it turns out, that assessment was solidly right. They were entrenched in policies and behavior that basically guaranteed a tragic failure. And because of those policies the rescue from mistakes always fell on my doorstep well past when it would be trivial to solve the problem. This created a horrifically unpredictable work environment.
All and all, it was a growth experience and I probably gave the company a year of life it wouldn't have had otherwise. I would never take another job where that was said to me though.
> Also, due to the continued rampant mistreatment of people under our visa situation (ranted about elsewhere), a lot of them have to put up with far more shit.
That is perhaps the understatement within the whole article.
The ability to push some people further than others before they tap out, results in an environment where that is the normal level of stress.
And those who can survive it, but don't want to tend to be marked out as "problems", instead of acknowledging that the insanity is temporary and everyone should/will take a break to recover instead of just burning out one person at a time, while keeping the hiring pipeline trickling in to cover that.
Cuture fit is a blank check to fail a person's interview just because you didn't like them in the first 30 seconds. Short of the candidate showing some glaring interpersonal issues (I once had a guy who used the word "fuck" during his interview like 100 times) it is categorically impossible to establish in a 45 minute interview whether a person is actually a "fit" or not. So it's mostly a legitimized form of hiring bias. Too old? That's a poor "culture fit" right there.
> Cuture fit is a blank check to fail a person's interview just because you didn't like them in the first 30 seconds.
I hear this all the time. Yeah, that might be true in some cases, but it's also valid in quite a lot of instances (like the example you provided).
> it is categorically impossible to establish in a 45 minute interview whether a person is actually a "fit" or not
I've run/sat in on several trainwreck interviews over the years (for ad account manager roles and logistical analyst roles mostly). Here are a few examples of candidates that were perfect in every way until the interview based on culture fit:
* The guy that mentioned he only traveled to Thailand because ladyboys do it better.
* The guy that mentioned he wouldn't work with anyone that drank alcohol because it's "the retardant of the masses". Fair enough opinion. About 20% of our ad sales came from alcohol-related businesses. I asked if he would have a problem dealing with liquor businesses. He explained that wouldn't be a problem as long as they didn't ask if he drank.
* I was sitting in on an interview with the Marketing Director for an account management gig on a Monday morning. We asked the candidate if she did anything noteworthy over the weekend. She told us she went dancing with her friend "Molly" at a music festival and laughed.
* The analyst that mentioned he scrapes NSFW subreddits in his spare time and links throwaway accounts to main accounts based on comment history, similar subreddit crossover, posting times, and vernacular (his tool was pretty impressive -- it sent him an email whenever it had a hit with over 50% accuracy or something which he received during the interview).
I don't see this as a culture issue, but really poor professionalism. These are people who don't seem to realize that work small-talk is... at work.
My non-work life is by most measures pretty unusual. But my answer during the Monday standups to "what did you do on the weekend?" is.. "Oh, not much, some housecleaning and laundry".
I was wondering the same thing - if you're a good dev, I could care less what recreational drugs you're doing on weekends. Bringing it up in an interview is a bit of a faux pas though.
Presumably, the interviewers interpreted it to mean the drug. But another potential interpretation is that she's gay and laughed because she was uncomfortable with the left-handed admission to her sexual orientation. Perhaps she was testing the waters to see how people would react to news that she went dancing with a woman.*
Perhaps it was a wild misunderstanding or perhaps not. I'm sure we would all rather think it's a drug policy, but the reality is that the LGBTQ crowd faces discrimination severe enough that they are at increased risk of homelessness compared to the general population.
* Edit: Or perhaps she didn't really think about what she saying, then realized after the fact that she just admitted in a job interview to a same sex date, then laughed uncomfortably.
I would not recognise this as a drug reference, but even if it is, as long as you restrict it to the weekends, I see no problem with it. Dancing with a woman does not automatically imply LGBTQ, and even if it did, seeing that as a lack of cultural fit is kinda awful; that'd be using 'cultural fit' as an excuse for discrimination.
I mean, there are people named Molly. I definitely have a lack of cultural fit with people that freak out at coincidences, because I see so many every day. Accidental double entendres are a thing that happens.
To be absolutely fair, being all into drugs myself - if someone actually used a phrase “I danced at a festival with my friend molly”, I would absolutely never want to spend my time with them again.
That literally is the trashiest thing you can ever say.
If its not immoral to use drugs it shouldn't be immoral to talk about it. "Trashy" is just an label for behavior deemed unwanted or associated with low class. But the parent (presumably) deemed using drugs not trashy by his own admission of using them.
It's also not immoral to have sex. It would be, at a minimum, very odd to share the blow-by-blow details of such activities the prior weekend with an interviewer. I don't think I'm being a prude to say I would probably close out that interview as soon as reasonably possible and move on.
By my definition of “trashy” - it’s only “cool” to share the fact that you had sex with someone when you’re 15.
Same is here: I can imagine many situations where discussing the effects of drugs and your experiences of them to be interesting. But “I spend a weekend dancing with molly” sounds more like a 15-year-old just got access to sex for the first time.
I don't take the "dancing with Molly" as a blow-by-blow, more like an acknowledgement of a certain activity. But I wouldn't take acknowledging that you had sex to be trashy if relevant to the conversation. But the the interviewer made the dancing response relevant when they asked if they did anything noteworthy over the weekend.
> If its not immoral to use drugs it shouldn't be immoral to talk about it.
I don't think I can agree with that reasoning in the context of a job interview. I wouldn't want to hear about your sex life either, but that doesn't mean you can't have one.
The issue isn't that they have fun on the weekends, it's that they would bring it up in a formal job interview. The interview is the absolute 100% best behavior you will ever see from them (bar a bit of nervousness), so I personally would see this as a major red flag.
Or maybe Molly is just Molly in this case. As in, a human friend, with whom the interviewee went to a music festival and danced. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
+1. And the one that is bad is similar to the trainwreck I mentioned in the original post (complete lack of self-awareness). GP just underscored my point without intending to do so.
No, it's not. That comment being inappropriate had nothing to do with the candidate's sexual preference. It had to do with a candidate making an inappropriate sexual remark during an interview.
If the comment was "X women do it better" it would still be inappropriate.
Ironically, the HR staff member present during the interview was a gay man himself. I guess he must be homophobic in your eyes also for discarding the application?
If it were, I'd understand. I'm quite aware and accommodating of autism spectrum issues. But the guy was just arrogant and acted with an unwarranted degree of familiarity towards me just because we're from the same country. I'm of the opinion that where the candidate was born should buy them absolutely nothing. Many interviewers don't share this opinion BTW. Some will give overt preference to their compatriots, possibly on the account of "cultural fit".
It didn't help that he didn't do well on the coding question either. In the end I only mentioned the "fucks" in passing in my feedback, and disqualified him on technical merit.
Absolutely. And if he was swearing occasionally, I'd say it was a personality trait. But swearing 100 times in an hour? That's rather extreme -- and a high stress situation like an interview is exactly when such a disorder would show up the most.
It can be, but I've seen very valid uses of it. Some cultures value openness more than others, top-down vs. bottom-up, well-defined roles vs. flexibility, big company vs. small.
Anecdotally I've seen "not a good culture fit" used to fail an interview when the applicant was so stunningly incompetent that it was too awkward to tell the truth.
The company I work for definitely hires people who are not a "culture fit" and our company is better for it. People who bring different perspective make your products stronger.
I think the word "culture" is overloaded, such that it's really hard to talk about and you can make it mean whatever you want, but there's a use for it that I don't know a better way to describe in a word. Yes, there is "culture fit" in terms of things that don't matter, and where it does good to push a company outside of a comfort zone in order to get the best people and new perspectives.
But at a certain point, you need to get alignment between what work you find rewarding/fulfilling/exciting and what work a company tends to recognize and reward. This essay I think gets at the heart of it:
If you are a programmer, which kind of organization do you think you would tend to want to work at, all things being equal: one where the organization's culture is set by people who come from programming backgrounds or sales backgrounds? It's not the same answer as if you were a salesperson. (And of course, there are programmers who probably prefer the culture at a place driven by salespeople, and vice versa. And you can start to think about why that might be.)
As an employee, what a good culture fit means is "someplace that values and rewards the things I want to be doing." As an employer, a good culture fit is someone who responds well to the incentives you have in place for them. Sometimes, cultures are just objectively bad; anywhere that judges programmers by how many lines of code they write alone is establishing perverse incentives. But sometimes cultures are not better or worse objectively, just different. Some people work better in a research culture and some people work better in a product culture, for instance. That's fine. But that's where finding out if you and an employee are a culture fit can benefit both parties, not just be an excuse to hire only people you like. It's not about beliefs, it's about what work is valued and how it's valued.
I'm proud of the people who are and have been a part of our team. For such a small company we do fairly well. And although there's little managers can do about it, we like to stay aware of cliques too. They are so corrosive. I believe that plays into what is described as "fit" as well.
Any kind of "fit" should be a two-way street but it usually isn't (or maybe it's nine lane super highway one-direction and pitted gravel road in the other direction). They have lots of money that they might spend on your arguably good skill set. You have a bit of money you might use to hold out until one better fit comes along.
They (for a sad portion of "they") can afford crappy "fits" in terms of competence if it flatters them in one or another fashions or a person shows a willingness to throw umpteen hours into the cause. What can you afford?
> You have a bit of money you might use to hold out until one better fit comes along.
> What can you afford?
I've done contracting work in between W2 jobs. In the full swing of contracting I make ~25% more money but I prefer the stability and simplistically of working a full time salary position (guaranteed two paychecks a month, better health insurance, fully clocked out by 6pm). I absolutely won't go into a full time salary position unless the company and culture is a very good fit and the pay is competitive.
If you know how to code and have something that proves you do (CS degree, work history, github etc) you should never feel stuck at one place. If a company isn't treating you with excellence you can make more money as an independent contractor.
And the overall economic situation - I'm too young to have experience of the job market during the last recession but I can't imagine that switching jobs or starting a career was a great experience at the time.
I think that like any category of evaluation, it works best if it's specific, consistent, and planned.
Eg "Part of our culture is that we are collaborative; when we discussed code reviews and the candidate said they think they are a waste of time, that raised a flag because constructive and timely code reviews is an expectation for all our our engineers" That's pretty good.
"Our culture is collaborative. This candidate didn't feel like they'd be a good fit here." That's not so good.
Have an evaluation criteria going in. Rate candidates on the the same criteria. In debriefs, use specific examples from the interview to explain why you rated them as you did. Otherwise, it's just post-hoc rationalization of a snap emotional decision.
Absolutely. Azure? “We take care of technical debt as we go”? You don’t know your engineers retention off the top of your head, but half of the projects I’m supposed to interface with have lost their tech lead and you can’t replace any? I’ve asked a non-technical executive what is a rollback and they didn’t know?
Well, let's be real - there's good diversity and bad diversity. No one says "We need more diversity" and means "At the moment everyone in the office has good hygiene standards, let's bring in someone who smells".
The problem is that "Culture Fit" is often undefined - rarely is it explicit enough for us to say: "Our culture is x,y,z. This person showed this behavior so it's a no".
Although one thing I will say as an interviewer is I've had to reject candidates on "Culture Fit" in the past based on things like "This candidate talks way too much and it's so disruptive and frustrating that I literally can't get through the competency part of the interview". However, there is no way I'm going to feed that back to the candidate- so often Culture Fit is used as a neutral way of rejecting someone.
As someone who has built and led many engineering/product teams interviewing & evaluating for/on culture is super important.
One key thing though is making sure everyone on the team understands our culture, and applies is somewhat fairly.
Personally I define "culture" as following the values set by the company and the department.
At my current place what are the core culture concepts we look out for (in a nutshell):
- Valuing the delivery of functional & sustainable products over checking boxes or coming up with impressive/resume-building solutions
- Everyone is expected to support, teach, and grow one another and everyone has something they can teach.
- Valuing receiving & giving honest, direct, and valuable feedback.
Many engineers would NOT fit this culture and in some interviews that becomes very apparent. We also send our values to our interviews before we bring them on site and reiterate them strongly before giving an offer letter... Thoes who have ignored this have never lasted to 6 months due to clashes with deliverables and with other team members.
This is very true, but it's also important to remember that the drift might not indicate that anyone has lost their way. The needs at a company of twelve people are different than the needs at a company of a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand. At the disruptor vs. the incumbent. Pre-profit vs. post-profit. I know people who have been first developer or first COO/CMO/VPE at multiple companies, leaving each without any rancor whatsoever when those companies outgrew their own ideal skillset and working style.
Sometimes people and companies naturally grow apart. While the OP's point that it's not always your fault is a good one, the conclusion (that if it's not your fault it must be the company's) does not follow. Sometimes it's not a fault. It's just a thing that happened.
> Look at a statement of equivalence. You might say that "A is equal to B" or "A == B". There are two "flows" going on there: A has to match up with B, sure, but B also has to match up with A.
Weird way to describe the symmetric property of equality from discrete math 201
> If really good people who are able to literally work anywhere are still at your company even though they don't have to be, it's probably doing pretty well. If those same people then turn around and leave the company, you should worry. They are the canaries in the coal mine, and fail first. It takes much longer for it to filter down to the folks who don't have the privilege of having so much flexibility and so many options.
You’d be amazed at corporate ability to find excuses for their canaries departure. Sometimes to the degree that you could be forgiven for assuming their goal was downsizing without layoffs.
It's the most destructive form of downsizing for the company, as the competent staff who have options jump ship and only the dregs are left hanging around.
I think “culture” is a vague word that can be made to do a lot of work, a weasel word. Culture as a reason for not hiring someone strikes me a very suspicious. There should be a concrete reason the person is not fit for the work as part of a no-hire decision.
“Culture” should be an emergent property of the people who work at the company.
The thing is, homogenous teams perform better than diverse ones, contrary to the common agenda these days. But you can't say I want everybody in my team to be more or less same as me, same culture, same behavioural codes, same common sense and all those things that makes a team perform smoothly like a well oiled machine. So instead they invent all kind of terms and roundabout ways to get to the same results while preaching to the masses about diversity and all kind of nonsense like that.
> homogenous teams perform better than diverse ones
What evidence do you have for this, and how do you define "homogeneous"? (Homogeneous in terms of what attributes?)
Maybe you've just been on teams where the people aren't very good at getting along with people who are different from themselves. For example, if adding a well-qualified woman to a team of men causes the team to lose productivity, that's probably a sign of immaturity in the team, not a problem with the new member.
The employees of any organization develop culture in how they interact (this is the real org culture), but some organizations also try and steer towards the culture they consider 'ideal' (the false culture you allude to). This attempt is often ham-fisted, and often fails.
I start by reviewing how I'm being managed, I expect someone managing me to be clear in their expectations of my work product, provide resources when I have identified the need to complete jobs, can clearly articulate the problem I am expected to be solving, and can clearly articulate the criteria by which the solution will be evaluated.
Second I review my co-workers, using a three axis evaluation, can I trust what they say to be accurate/honest, can I count on them to meet their commitments, and are they willing to teach me when I don't understand something and conversely learn when their is something they do not know.
Third I review what level of support do I get to do my job. Am I provided with a workspace where I can get work done? Do have have the equipment I need to do what is being asked? Is my commute conducive to the hours required? And finally and most important, does this job allow me to balance work obligations and non-work obligations?
Fourth I review whether or not the company mission, ethics, and culture is still one that I wish to be a part of. Am I proud of the company's mission? Do I believe that the leadership will make ethical calls even if doing so would mean less profit margin? Can I relate to and am I compatible with the values that my co-workers espouse and the actions they take? (this is the "company culture" theme, is it still a company that fits me culturally)
A company that receives lower than a 3.0 rating I put on a 90 day "company improvement plan" (CIP). I bring issues to the leadership who are in a position to address the situations that I've found wanting and try to secure their commitment to change. If after 90 days they haven't been able to (if they choose not to they're done right away), then I "fire" the company and work to process my exit as expeditiously as possible.