Culture fit doesn't have to stretch that far - it does not need to be pervasive and it does not need to be toxic.
We had a guy from Gaza in our office - he complained about informal emails sent to invite people for drinks because it was sinful, he complained about a manikin that got dressed up at special occasions because it was immodest.
I don't know what lines to draw here - but be careful when playing with double-edged swords.
He should have insinuated being a recovered alcoholic instead, that works for me when I feel I'm being unduly pressured.
As someone who doesn't care for drinks, the quickest way to shut-down all that drinks-are-vital-to-our-culture talk is to declare that I used to have a problem with the drink, but I'm sober now, and watch them stammer something about the event being optional.
Not the OP, but some people are offended by the mere mention of drinks, and that looked like the case there. I personally don't like to go out for drinks, and this can be detrimental to my career, but I wouldn't impose my preference on others.
Honestly - some people just don't like the feeling (me) and some other people (south east asians in particular) are allergic and overly sensitive to booze. There are really, really easy ways to talk yourself out of drinking situations.
> There are really, really easy ways to talk yourself out of drinking situations.
Absolutely, but in my experience no other reason shuts down attempts at negotiating/cajoling/follow up questions/suggestions to "just show up and grab a soda" faster than pleading the alcoholism. It appears AA gets more unquestioning deference compared to any other personal/health/religious reasons
Makes sense though- when you have a religious objection to alcohol, someone drinking it near you isn't going to cause actual extreme bodily harm to you.
Just tell them you don't like drinking. We organize the same kind of meetings over at where I work, and if someone says they don't like drinking, we tell them that water is fine, if they say they don't want to join for whatever or no reason, then we say fine and let them know that the meeting will be always open to them.
Good point. We'll change the meeting description to include this note about water (or anything else), this way we can skip the whole conversation and go straight to the meeting.
It's much easier to take the habits of early employees and call that "Company culture" without considering the reasoning or consequences. If Engineer #1 used to go on drinks on Wednesdays to cope with stress after the weekly release, 100 engineers later it becomes engrained as "company culture" to drink on Wednesdays at the same bar (which was on the way to his home) even though releases are now done on Thursdays and the bar is out of the way for most people.
Is there such a thing?
Sometimes it's better to stick with what you like instead of spending days figuring out how to include everyone.
We'll just adapt the meeting if we see someone doesn't fit.
> he complained about a manikin that got dressed up at special occasions because it was immodest
Uhhhh... dare I ask to explain what was going on with said mannequin? What kind of “special occasion” requires this... ritual?
Also, I can’t tell whether you are implying that it would have been better for your coworker to have been filtered out because you think they are too sensitive, or if you are implying that your office asks weird things of people. What is the “double-edged sword”?
OR some of these squabbles over lifestyle preferences should not be contested in an office space because people should not be living out their personal lives through office decorations or in anyway identifying with the office in such a way that the hefty and meaningful word "culture" implies. Everyone should have ample personal space and personal time and lives of their own. You shouldn't remember whether the office mannequin needed to be removed. That's a trifle.
At some point you have to give people incentives to actually want to work in an office culture. Stringent office professionalism is an ideal that is held up in conflicts, but no workplace looks that way.
Managers will quickly identify emotional needs and this adherence to neutrality is a telltale sign that something is bothering you. My task would be address that but also keep it from affecting other employees.
Makes me wonder if that particular individual would complain about a Pride Month email being "sinful". As a gay man I would refuse to work with someone like this.
Recently, I saw a paradigm that I liked. Instead of seeking candidates for "culture fit" seek them for "culture value-add". In other words, a candidate may fit the culture now, but not necessarily in the future. The value-add paradigm forces one to think about the direction in which the current culture should grow.
So if I'm hiring someone at what point am I allowed to use my own personal discretion? Am I allowed to dislike someone? Am I allowed to say I don't like them so please don't hire them?
You better be able to articulate what job-relevant reason is behind your dislike and be able to express it in those terms. If you go with your gut feel alone, you could be easily selecting for physical attractiveness, extroversion, a nice smile or some of the many less acceptable biases. Maybe you have perfectly diverse personal discretion, but most people choose copies of themselves or attractive members of the opposite sex.
If you can't do better than "shitty personality," I guarantee I wouldn't hire you. On the other hand, "Unwilling to respect colleagues they wouldn't personally be friends with" is a valid reason to make a no-hire decision.
"Can you tell me about a time you didn't get along with a colleague and how you worked through that situation?" One of my go-to questions and often illuminating. A good answer I have heard somewhat often ends with, "Stupid Jerk was never my friend, but we figured out how to work together and produce value anyway."
A lot of behaviour is obvious in aggregate but hard to identify in particular cases.
If you make a job posting, get 5 applicants, interview 3 of them and hire 1 it's hard to point a finger and say you did (or didn't) do anything wrong.
But let's say over the course of a year you receive 10,000 applications for various positions and 15% of those are African American. Now say that 10% of applicants get to the interview stage but none of the African American applicants made it to the interview stage then, in the very least, that looks bad. You would need to justify why that's the case.
Discrimination can be subtle. A lot of people who are discriminatory but don't think they are. In the US, for example, you have what are called "second syllable names". These are names that are traditionally AFrican American (eg Lakisha). I vaguely recall reading a study where someone took a bunch of resumes for assistant positions and for a bunch with "first syllable names" they replaced just the name with "second syllable names" and there was a statistically significant decrease in response rate.
So your personal discretion doesn't extend to unlawful hiring and firing practices.
Sidestepping the parent (and the mention of the studies; I have heard of but not read them) to ask you a question:
Where did you find/learn the term "second syllable name" and "first syllable name"? I tried looking it up and struck out (aside from some requests for baby names like that), though it's quite descriptive and makes perfect sense.
It did lead me to the wikipedia article [0] about African-American names, which enlightened me a bit on the origins of some of those.
I believe (but I'm not 100% certain) that I personally first heard this term when I heard about these studies. I remember it because it's something that hadn't occurred to me.
But that's the thing: your mind is capable of making these subconscious connections. So if you happen to be discriminatory against African Americans, names are going to be a signal whether you realize it or not.
I'm oddly reminded of some TikToks I've seen recently where people talk about how they're unintentionally conditioned their dogs with things like "Thank you, good meeting" as something they always say at the end of a Zoom call and their dogs perk up because they know they're going to get attention, go for a walk or whatever.
Forming a connection doesn't require intent from either party.
I'm very aware of the biases that I gained growing up in my household and do my absolute best to crush them. That's why this term stuck out to me; it's not something I had heard but makes absolute sense when I look at how people in my family react to names.
This reminds me of a practice a recruiter used to boast when I applied for a job - throwing half the applications in the shredder without even reading them because they didn’t want to work with “unlucky people”. Albeit I was mildly curious about what mental gymnastics the person did to end up with such a frivolous way of not doing his job, I never left a building quicker ever since.
Someone company or gov organisation I can't recall who removed all names and gender data from their application process, it decreased the likelyhood of a woman getting hired. Everyone keeps saying we're all stained with some original sin of not being able to hire without awful biases, we're not to be trusted with our own thoughts.
While that trial didn’t have the desired result, didn’t it show or at least strongly suggest that gender and background are factors in recruiting in aggregate?
We can speculate what this means. One possibility is that the Australian public service overcompensates for gender bias by having a lower bar for female candidates. I can’t say if that’s true but this does seem to support the idea that some increase diversity with a lower hiring bar.
I remember the study about "second syllable names" and I remember a lot of people justifying it. "A good candidate would use a 'professional' sounding name".
And I'm sure none of those people justifying it in such a manner would similarly reject candidates that used a false name on their first pass for "acting in a dishonest manner". It's sort of a damned if you do damned if you don't situation unless you're cool going by Steve for the next few years.
Why don't you like them _and_ which of those reasons will affect their job performance?
Do they dismiss any approaches besides their own? Do they think mentoring is a waste of time? Do they think that their code is so obvious that there's no point in documenting? Do they think their code is so perfect that unit tests are unnecessary? These are good reasons to dislike someone and not hire them.
Do you dislike them because they seem kind of boring? Get over yourself.
They made Steve Jobs work the graveyard shift at Atari because he stunk so bad (he'd go weeks without showering) no one wanted to work with him. That had nothing to do with his skills or job performance, but everything to do with disrupting the work environment to the point where others couldn't perform to the best of their ability.
> Why don't you like them _and_ which of those reasons will affect their job performance?
> Do they dismiss any approaches besides their own? Do they think mentoring is a waste of time? Do they think that their code is so obvious that there's no point in documenting? Do they think their code is so perfect that unit tests are unnecessary? These are good reasons to dislike someone and not hire them.
> Do you dislike them because they seem kind of boring? Get over yourself.
This is an interesting discussion that brings a lot of vitriolic comments.
A counterpoint that you seem to be dismissing: building a successful team often requires a good cultural and team fit. Hiring just on 'merit' alone doesn't guarantee success.
Consider the example of hiring a 'superstar' that the other team members do not like which would consequently impact the performance of the team as a whole because they don't work optimally. For the manager in charge of the team, culture fit is an important factor alongside others.
You bring up the really interesting question - is discrimination justified? If it makes the team better, if it makes the product better, if it makes the company better, then maybe the right thing to do is hire the fun white guy instead of the boring brown girl.
If people believe that, then I'll only ask that they acknowledge it. Next time someone talks about gender disparity or race disparity, stand up and say "Yep, hiring isn't fair, the disparity isn't related to innate skills"
It would be a relief, frankly, if every one would just say that and agree on it. The problem is usually that when issues of race and gender disparity come up, a lot of posters then insist that hiring is perfectly fair and balanced and it must be the 'culture' of some races or the 'brain chemistry' of some genders that is the real problem.
I think there is a much more valid reason if people were being absolutely honest. Powerful and privileged people have spent generations spilling blood and other less violent measures to get on top and stay on top. Being on top only happens through threat of force and excercise of power. The people at the bottom will replace the people at the top if presented with the opportunity. Even if most people are content to live in equality, some will seek advantage and pull up their group. Otherwise kind and cooperative people rarely have any interest in lowering their status. Identity politics seek to treat symptoms but don't touch the root cause. The root cause is probably in our DNA and no social technology has yet proven able to tame the will to power.
And just to make it clear, I don't believe any group has any natural advantage over another, just historical and geopolitical advantage.
You make very good points - sometimes the best discussions are well down in the comments.
Currently, while men hold the majority of the economic and political power in the US. From a purely Machiavellian viewpoint, why should they hire anyone besides other white men? They only stand to lose if business and politics become more egalitarian.
What's changed in the past century or so is that it can no longer appear blatant - "we're better because we say so" isn't cutting it anymore. Still - maybe given a chance a lot of them will find a way to hire each other. "Team culture" is as good an excuse as any.
It seems more like a prisoner's dilemma situation, where hiring from an in-group only works if you trust other members of the in-group enough to return the favor. Otherwise they could "betray", hiring a better candidate from outside the group who will perform better in the role. The person betraying would get both a better employee and the social kudos of having a diverse hiring record. I'd expect the trust strategy is a lot more common among fraternities, religious groups, diaspora communities, etc where community bonds are much stronger.
And to restate your point, the business may gain greatly from diversity in leadership, but the in-group mainly stands to lose. If they don't stand to lose then it's not really power sharing, is it? In my experience, these efforts hit the wall the moment they seek any real piece of the power pie. That's the difference between talks-the-talk and walks-the-walk.
Do you mean diversity in race and gender? I thought the argument was that there's no differences between races and gender? I actually genuinely believe that everyone should be treated equally but your line of thinking seems to suggest race and gender matter in decision making, its contradictory.
So the only reason you get to the top is through force? That's ridiculous, in modern society people also get to the top through competence. When I look around at successful people I know it's because they worked hard, have the experience so that their judgement is respected. In other words people look to their authority on their given domain. Who do you mean in your day to day life that used violence to get there?
Can you elaborate a bit on your first point -- hiring the fun person over the boring one. Are you implying you are selecting culture over diversity, or that the persons perception of fun is biased by their preferences?
It reminds me of an article about MDMA and fascist groups and how one leads to the other. I don't have a link, the article was terrible anyways, but the base idea, supported by scientific studies was interesting.
I don't know if a friend of yours took MDMA, but my friend told me that it is pretty much impossible to be aggressive under its influence, you can't help but love everyone. So, how can it lead to hate?
The explanation was that MDMA strengthens the bounds between people, and the closest people are within that group, the more the outside of the group is seen as a threat, a threat you have to protect your group against. Think of an aggressive mother protecting her baby.
So yes, I see how "culture fit", can lead to harmful discrimination, even when centered around positive values and topics as harmless as Star Wars and craft beer.
This is quite a stretch to start connecting "love of your neighbor" to fascism. Now I start to understand the shift of Coinbase and Basecamp no politics policies. You can't win these games
As a compliment to this point :
Tgings I'd consider valid culture fit criteria :
1) does this candidate have a positive attitude about the work that they do?
2) is this candidate respectful to the clients they work with? (E.g. a coworker of mine routinely calls our client contacts a "fucking bitch" on internal calls.
These aren't really possible to evaluate in the hiring process, but can be a big problem once theyve already been hired.
I think these two things are not examples of “culture fit”, but rather common work requirements. I don’t think there’s a company hiring specifically people that have negative attitude about the work they do and who are disrespectful to clients.
In my opinion, evaluation of culture fit is about things that are specific to the company, not “good” vs “bad”, but rather “we do this way, although other ways might be valid in other companies” and “we don’t do this way, although doing so in other companies has merit”.
For example, “we work as a family”. Surely work in this kind of company might bring more joy to some people, but will degrade work-life balance. Other company might have a culture of “work-life balance”, and if observed strictly, it will reduce the quality of team work, but will be much better long term for mental health of employees.
Both cultures are possible, and there are certainly people with strong preference for one culture or the other. I think it is crucial to articulate what kind of culture you have in your company, and select candidates who fit.
Is it discrimination if I own a company and only hire my friends who are into the same things as me? Serious question because I don't understand how that's different, if it is.
> Is it discrimination if I own a company and only hire my friends who are into the same things as me?
Yes, any time you make a decision which treats people differently on any basis, is it is discrimination.
What you probably mean to ask is whether it is illegal discrimination. For which the answer is more complicated. It doesn't seem to be directly illegal discrimination, unless “into the same things” itself directly involves protected characteristics like religion. But it could still be illegal as disparate impact discrimination [0], if it has differential impact on a protected axis without sufficient business necessity.
If you are in the US, federal discrimination laws only apply if you have a certain number of employees.
Your state may have a specific and more restrictive law, but you are free to be as discriminatory as you want until you have at least 15 employees (under Federal law).
The difference between 15 and 20 on just age discrimination seems very arbitrary. How did they even come up with that instead of just putting it together with the rest of the stuff?
I have never found any source remotely close to it but it would be nice if we had a revision history on laws so we could see who added what lines and why. I'm guessing it is out there in some official record.
Serious answer: Yes, but it's legal discrimination. If you were doing so based on sex, race, or other protected class it would be illegal discrimination.
Yes. But then hiring itself is discriminatory unless it's random.. The whole point of interviews is to discriminate.
Back to the spirit of your question; it is legal discrimination. Frankly I support your ability to hire who you want at your company within legal bounds. I also support teams hiring people who will go to the pub so shrug.
If that implies that you're taking potential jobs away from people who would be better qualified, then absolutely. If the alternative is to just not hire anyone, then I don't see the problem—at that point you're basically paying friends to keep you company at your job.
Are you hiring them because you know them and you trust them? That is not discrimination. Are you hiring them because you want to win the tech-company beach volleyball tournament? That's discrimination.
You could probably get away with it. Would you feel good about yourself? Would you feel pissed if you found out that you didn't get a job you really wanted, only because another company was trying to fill out their rugby team?
Not really following your example, but let's say I hired them because I wanted to have someone to play multiplayer games with in the office. I give them money, and we both have a good time. The question is whether it's discrimination or not. To spice up the (highly hypothetical) example even more: I don't really need to hire anyone but I'm rich and want to be surrounded by friends so either they get hired to play games with me or the job isn't happening at all. No-one is missing out on the job... but could it still be discrimination?
Also, whether I trust them or not does not seem to matter according to your sibling comments.
As a side note (and a fully conjectural query), do you think that the desire of control of a branded monoculture in the work place is one of the reasons for the push to bring employees back to the workplace?
You can separate the culture of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter as easily as any brand, like Nike and Reebok. Those cultural brands are surely dissolving without the guiding hand of in office guidelines.
I suspect the majority of it is that a lot of managers are finding themselves at loose ends. A typical manager in an office environment spends a lot of time interacting with the people working under them. Now they're not able to do the majority of their work and... the people under them are still performing, often better. It would take an exceptionally self-aware person not to flinch from that truth.
Speaking from experience, the “culture” at Microsoft and Google (at least) definitely varies more between teams and divisions than between those two companies on-the-whole.
Fair enough. Nadella's hard push for the return is curious to me (I'm in the Seattle area, and close-ish to the campus with quite a few friends who work in a single team, so I'm a bit myopic, I suppose). They all seem to do well remotely, and I do also. I probably do work less hours, on the whole, but I produce more... so I dunno how that factors in. I can't speak to their quality of work, though.
I'd be curious to see how the productivity data working remotely scales out for people at different levels. As a new college hire I found that both working in the office and open offices improved my productivity, often explicitly at the expense of productivity for more experienced developers (because they were spending time answering my questions).
In the short term, it would be better for the more experienced developers to be more productive, because their time was worth more, but eventually the experienced developers will leave. If new people aren't trained to replace them fast enough, the system becomes unsustainable.
There are several other areas where eliminating certain activities provides short-term productivity gains at the expense of long-term cohesion. All hands meetings about company direction can be delayed for a month with no negative impact, but if I skip all large company meetings for a year I'd have a much harder time prioritizing tasks (it's unclear which contribute directly to the company's long-term plans and which are busy work) and no idea how to route serious issue only tangentially related to my team.
It's entirely possible there's a looming but currently well-hidden pipeline issue companies are anticipating and trying to avoid.
Full disclosure, I'm in my late forties, so there's a definite impact on my work flow there. I honestly think that a hybrid style is the best, but I don't need to be in more than once a week (if that - usually) to be completely honest. Most of my communications are done over Slack, in office or not =[ my team is small and we just aren't that chatty of a group except on certain subjects. We're excited about Dune, and I'm sure everyone not in our team is ecstatic that we haven't gone back to the office yet. When we have a work question, we put it in the Slack channel. Stands ups have moved to Slack as well, which are great because I can reference exactly what was said and not a summary email by a "Scrum Master" like I'm in some corporate fantasy sports league- no offense to scrum masters out there. I've met some cool ones. We email our progress and it's handled and update on JIRA. I dunno, there seem to be enough tools for me.
But, if you're starting out, it's a pain in the butt. When to ask questions and who to ask. Where to get guidance about what, and code reviews have to be done in person. They're super intimidating already (for me anyway). Meeting a core group of people your age at a company is important, as well. That's where you spend so much of your time and those social interactions can't be ignored. I keep in touch with people from jobs I worked at 20 years ago. They will help your network in life and career in the future, and that is all being stunted..... sorry. Got off track. But all important issues, depending on what stage of your life/career you're in.
Someone in another thread suggested that this is basically what you expect to happen when a bunch of college kids from well off families leave school and form a startup: They want to pretend they are still in college, but now getting paid for it.
I really doubt that listening to people try to emulate the belter language and lingo is any better than listening to jar jar impressions (or klingon...), but it's hard to be say until it happens, so... bring it on
"culture fit" is one of the biggest causes of workplace discrimination and I still see it pushed in 'hiring training' as perfectly valid criteria.
Things I've seen teams consider "culture"
- will the candidate go to our weekly study session at the micro-brewery?
- will the candidate stay after work to play multi-player games with us?
- is the candidate entertained by all the Star Wars lingo we use?
If you don't find these discriminatory, think about how well a recent poster from Gaza would have done with them. Not well, I suspect
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849054