I've conducted hundreds of interviews and I agree about the tech stack, but disagree about culture.
Tech is usually easy to pick up, and highly company specific. Any good engineer should be able to learn new tech, and things will change over time.
Culture is much harder to "teach". For me testing for culture fit has become much more important than tech acumen, particularly at more senior levels. You need to have a sense of at least whether the candidate aligns with the company culture, and is willing to fit.
Not doing this risks several scenarios:
a) The candidate takes a while, but finally fits with the culture. This is suboptimal but ultimately a good outcome.
b) Candidate refuses to fit with the culture. This will likely cause performance issues, and the employee will ultimately leave or get fired. Not a good outcome.
c) Candidate actively subverts the company culture. This is the most destructive outcome and can be quite damaging, particularly at higher levels.
Checking that someone will be a good fit for the company is better for both the company and the candidate.
On the other hand if you never hire anyone with different ideas then you'll inevitably create a monoculture that had difficulty seeing its own weaknesses and making improvements.
Sometimes two philosophies aren't necessarily wrong but simply aren't compatible. Choices like emphasising frequent collaboration and constant communication or async-first deep work. Mismatches there are genuine culture misfits and it benefits everyone to realise that early and move on with no hard feelings.
But a lot of ideas in how a team works are not so black and white. It's valuable to hire people who have different ideas and aren't afraid to advocate for them when the time is right as long as they are still team players who will accept a result that isn't their personal preference if that's the team's consensus or management's direction. Not hiring people like that because their personal preferences don't align with the team's current way of doing things is also a culture misfit but in this case it's a dodged bullet for the good candidate.
> > Culture is much harder to "teach". For me testing for culture fit has become much more important than tech acumen, particularly at more senior levels. You need to have a sense of at least whether the candidate aligns with the company culture, and is willing to fit.
> On the other hand if you never hire anyone with different ideas then you'll inevitably create a monoculture that had difficulty seeing its own weaknesses and making improvements.
This is a balancing act for which there isn't a hard and fast rule, because organizations need a culture, but not all cultural values are good.
A group might want to bend on someone who is weaker on their Documentation And Testing value, but not bend on someone who is weaker on their Honesty value; but maybe they won't bend on Documentation And Testing because they view it as essential and don't want to risk that the FNG won't internalize it.
"But that isn't the cultures I object to," I've heard critics say. Of course not. But sometimes those are the cultural values that folks are trying to conserve. That's why there's no hard and fast rule.
Sometimes the cultural values are dishonesty or bigotry or cronyism, or simply an aversion to being called "bro". But often they're honesty and open-mindedness and fairness. We should not toss out the baby with the bathwater.
I recently interviewed a candidate that seemed solid technically but kept calling me bro. I’m pretty laid back but that was a fail. Note to everyone here: don’t do that.
Counter note: I've done 100s of interviews. A bro, bruh, or brah wouldn't even register as something notable to me. This is just how my younger coworkers talk.
Their use of "bet" has taken some getting used to.
I haven't had that happen, but it would be refreshing. I would be really weirded out by a "sir" though. casual environments where people can just work and not worry about wearing a persona are nice.
I think the use of "sir" depends on the person's background culture. If you're from the US, it's probably too formal unless you're in the military or something, but other cultures place a higher value on respect for authority. I've had people not originally from the US call me "sir", and while I make sure they know they don't have to, I also don't worry about it.
I would also be weirded out by sir. I say dude a lot but I wouldn’t throw that out like a nervous tic in an interview—it’s a little too familiar and doesn’t exactly reflect situational awareness.
I recently interviewed at a place where the interviewers kept calling me bro or dude, so maybe they'll match with each other at some point.
Without wanting to get into a discussion of the gender-neutrality of those words, I'm not a man and everyone that I talked with there was, and it just felt odd.
The same sort of problem exists across generations. I've had a few meetings with potential clients for our business who were quite young (sometimes literally but certainly culturally) and it felt like they were speaking a different language. When that language sounds like sound bites they probably heard on TikTok last night and yet somehow conveys no useful information whatsoever it's usually a good sign not to pursue that deal any further! You don't have to be all stuffy and formal but professional presentation and effective communication are valuable skills. I can only imagine what they must sound like when they're interviewing potential employees for their own business.
It depends what company culture actually is. I have worked at companies where documentation has been frowned upon – I'm not exaggerating either. That is something I most definitely will try and subvert.
Tech is usually easy to pick up, and highly company specific. Any good engineer should be able to learn new tech, and things will change over time.
Culture is much harder to "teach". For me testing for culture fit has become much more important than tech acumen, particularly at more senior levels. You need to have a sense of at least whether the candidate aligns with the company culture, and is willing to fit.
Not doing this risks several scenarios:
a) The candidate takes a while, but finally fits with the culture. This is suboptimal but ultimately a good outcome.
b) Candidate refuses to fit with the culture. This will likely cause performance issues, and the employee will ultimately leave or get fired. Not a good outcome.
c) Candidate actively subverts the company culture. This is the most destructive outcome and can be quite damaging, particularly at higher levels.
Checking that someone will be a good fit for the company is better for both the company and the candidate.