I cannot stand the whole "culture fit" gambit. It's a job, not a country club. The idea that some people will "fit in" and others won't and that this can be determined during an interview is naive at best.
What you get are a bunch of new hires who's only qualification over the not-hired is that they put on a good show for the interviewers. I'd say they are the best actors, but that doesn't cover those very good actors who make the mistake of playing the wrong part. Say you are willing to work through weekends to meet deadlines ... oops sorry, you guessed wrong. In this office that attitude is too competitive. We are going with those who guessed "no, weekends are for relaxing" and don't think you would get along with them.
The message this sends to current employees is also evil: if you don't fit in perfectly we don't want you. So everyone shows up to work in costume, wearing a mask, because they fear standing apart. Bring the wrong suit or express the wrong opinion and you might not "fit" anymore. We often hear about a lack of visible diversity in IT. How can we expect to achieve visible diversity if we cannot yet tolerate emotional and cultural diversity? Employees and prospective employees should be judged on on their work product, not on their ability to emotionally camouflage themselves.
As someone who's travelled 10,000 mile round-trips for final interviews, only to lose out on "culture fit," I find it the most frustrating excuse for not getting a job I have otherwise proven over previous interview rounds that I am capable for. Why? Because it's totally unquantifiable and subjective. Fair enough if you find a hole in my technical ability which would limit my performance in the job you want me to do, but using "culture" as the excuse is a nonsense.
There could be any number of reasons someone might not appear to "fit" on a given interview day, which wouldn't necessarily apply in them in the day-to-day - jet lag, the stress of the interview process, being under the weather and many more...
People and cultures adapt over time, through contact with each other; if you're denying good candidates because of their "fit" in the now, you're artificially limiting yourself for the future.
> I cannot stand the whole "culture fit" gambit. It's a job, not a country club. The idea that some people will "fit in" and others won't and that this can be determined during an interview is naive at best.
First, regarding the cultural fit: I think it's important that you share a similar mindset with the people who already work there. You'll get along better, and it is more productive. For example, if one person is much more assertive than another, and tends to get their way, we may miss out on the contributions of another. (A lot of very different examples here)
The second part: You're right, they can't give you a full personality quiz, but they're doing their best (oral communication and body language tell a lot more than having you fill in a quiz). They want to look for someone who fits in, so they bring you in and see if you do. What other way is there?
> ... best actors ...
I think if you intend to be an actor for the sake of a job, you're going to have a miserable time. Sure, I suppose this is the case if you value money more than satisfaction at you workplace. Which is where you'll make friends and spend a lot of your life, so I think you shouldn't, but that's subjective, so I concede this point.
> ... not fitting ...
This relates to the previous part in terms of priorities between just "getting the job" and "being happy with your job". As for the idea of not fitting in, I think it's too much of an exaggeration to think that people won't tolerate a few things here and there--but if you're entire view was different or fake to begin with, well maybe you didn't belong after all... you wouldn't be happy there anyway, so it's for the best.
Having a similar mindset or outlook doesn't mean that people will get along. Getting along is about conflict resolution and tolerance of other people. The best teams are those with various personalities.
Look at the space program. All those astronauts put on a good show. They look like they all play baseball together on weekends. In reality, they are bunch of very assertive and competitive Type-A personalities that, absent the overwhelming desire to fly into space, would rip each other to shreds. They get the job done because it is a job, not highschool.
Spot on! I know plenty of places that are "desperate" for talent but reject clearly talented people because of "cultural fit".
For example I know a couple of tdd shops that have passed over quality candidates because the candidates don't think tdd is super awesome. I'd understand if the candidate refused to code in a tdd style but it's not even that.....
"I think it's important that you share a similar mindset with the people who already work there. You'll get along better, and it is more productive."
In theory that might be nice, in practice its ALWAYS implemented with a search and replace of mindset for gender, race, religion, orientation, parents socioeconomic class, political affiliation, random quirk of geography, etc. And how can you blame them, after all those are the primary determinants of mindset?
This is how in a diverse nation you end up with 100% brogrammer shops.
While I agree that "culture fit" certainly is double-speak for a lot of toxic crap and discrimination, I think that corporate culture is something very important and worth keeping / building a good one.
Culture is also wether to be a perfectionist or to ship things now, even if they have bugs. To spend time sharing your knowledge with others or to document the code. To create a design or to quickly do what the customer wants. To generate comprehensive documentation, or to give personalised support. To tolerate brilliant aholes (hey, they are geniuses after all) or not.
All those things are different approaches to work, and being in places where the culture is different of your own can be a pain for both sides.
> I cannot stand the whole "culture fit" gambit. It's a job, not a country club. The idea that some people will "fit in" and others won't and that this can be determined during an interview is naive at best.
Funny thing: at country clubs, "culture fit" used to be a nice way of saying that we had better keep the Jews, Chinese, and Italians out, and that anyone darker-skinned than that will be automatically assumed to be an employee.
Yes, it's a job, but your ability to deliver on your work is not defined merely by private metrics like how fast you type, how many lines of code you can write a day, or even how knowledgeable and experienced you are about C++. Pretty much every job that you might apply to involves very large amounts of communication with your colleagues. When that communication breaks down (which it does even when you are a good culture fit), all sorts of elements come into play to help get things back on track. Also, when there is a need for rapid change (which there is on an almost daily basis in any company that's not on a straight path to the cemetery), communication and how well you gel with the rest of your team becomes the critical factor for how fast that change can happen.
"It's a job, not a computer game," I would reply. You can play your game by yourself with no interactions. Jobs require mature people who know how to communicate and behave in the target environment.
> What you get are a bunch of new hires who's only qualification over the not-hired is that they put on a good show for the interviewers. I'd say they are the best actors, but that doesn't cover those very good actors who make the mistake of playing the wrong part. Say you are willing to work through weekends to meet deadlines ... oops sorry, you guessed wrong. In this office that attitude is too competitive. We are going with those who guessed "no, weekends are for relaxing" and don't think you would get along with them.
If a company hires based on superficial answers like this, and thinks they're hiring based on culture fit, they're totally missing the point and they'll probably fail. Culture fit is at the same time far more subtle and far more concrete than this. Superficial features like whether you say that you're willing to work weekends or not are irrelevant. However, little and big details like how you walk down the street, whether you are open to someone questioning your ideas, whether you let someone else walk through the door first, whether you are a well rounded person with more to bring than just "I'm a great programmer", and, indeed, whether you recognise that you do want to work with people that you like and get along with, whether you you care about what kind of people you're going to be working with - individually those might be easy to fake, but as a whole, it's as hard to fake that general picture as it is to fake knowing about programming (to a programmer) when you're not a programmer. Even if you learn stuff by rote, details will slip.
> The message this sends to current employees is also evil: if you don't fit in perfectly we don't want you. So everyone shows up to work in costume, wearing a mask, because they fear standing apart. Bring the wrong suit or express the wrong opinion and you might not "fit" anymore. We often hear about a lack of visible diversity in IT. How can we expect to achieve visible diversity if we cannot yet tolerate emotional and cultural diversity?
That's the message, perhaps, if the company sending that message is totally stupid. Yes, culture fit matters, and yes, people can drift out of culture fit. But this is not something that happens suddenly, it happens over a long period. People don't suddenly come to work one day with a completely different outlook on how they want to behave at work. Obviously, if their definition of culture fit is based on childish, superficial details like whether you wear a suit, then yes, you'll get dumb behaviour from said companies.
My experience is that, quite unlike what you describe, organisations with culture fit enable people to stick out more. Because you know you're surrounded by relatively like-minded people, you tend to feel more comfortable being yourself. On the other hand, in an environment with a bland mix of employees with no consideration of culture fit, people tend to much more harshly punish people who stick out. Take a company like Zappos, which definitely cares about culture fit, and has as one of its explicit values "be weird", and compare the types of behaviours you see in that company to what you'd get somewhere like UBS or any typical traditional large corporate, which don't tend to care about culture fit, and you will easily see that people at Zappos tend to be much more willing to stick out - it's the ones working in the banks that have to wear masks all day.
> Employees and prospective employees should be judged on on their work product, not on their ability to emotionally camouflage themselves.
See above point - it's not about emotional camouflage, unless you're in a dumb company that doesn't understand the point of culture fit. It's about being emotionally intelligent and well matched to the people you'll be working with, so you feel comfortable being yourself around them, and don't have all this extra friction of working with people you don't really like or get along with.
> Did Office Space teach us nothing?
Yes, it taught us that the superficial understanding of culture you're describing can be implemented in horrible and somewhat comical (if you're not stuck in it) ways. It taught us that "pieces of flair" is a terrible way to measure enthusiasm, that "hawaiian shirt day" is ridiculous, that bland cultures generate zero loyalty or wellbeing, that culture, or lack thereof, can be a ruthlessly efficient demotivator.
In other words, it taught us that actual culture fit really does matter.
"Pretty much every job that you might apply to involves very large amounts of communication with your colleagues."
Yes, and the ability to communicate well with people who are culturally different is incredibly important.
Trying to find someone who has the same cultural fit as the interviewers is counterproductive unless your company is tiny or there is no mobility.
At my current company:
- We have close to 20% turnover and 10% growth in our software division.
- We have over 25 developers in our division.
- Developers frequently need to interact with the business arm, with the sales arm, and with the customer support arm. They all have significantly different cultures.
- Our clients have different cultures and as an "agile shop" our developers deal directly with them.
Getting along with the 4 people who interview you means next to nothing in light of the above.
I want people who can get behind our vision, who are good at their work, and who can get along with people whom they might not be best friends with outside of work.
What you get are a bunch of new hires who's only qualification over the not-hired is that they put on a good show for the interviewers. I'd say they are the best actors, but that doesn't cover those very good actors who make the mistake of playing the wrong part. Say you are willing to work through weekends to meet deadlines ... oops sorry, you guessed wrong. In this office that attitude is too competitive. We are going with those who guessed "no, weekends are for relaxing" and don't think you would get along with them.
The message this sends to current employees is also evil: if you don't fit in perfectly we don't want you. So everyone shows up to work in costume, wearing a mask, because they fear standing apart. Bring the wrong suit or express the wrong opinion and you might not "fit" anymore. We often hear about a lack of visible diversity in IT. How can we expect to achieve visible diversity if we cannot yet tolerate emotional and cultural diversity? Employees and prospective employees should be judged on on their work product, not on their ability to emotionally camouflage themselves.
Did Office Space teach us nothing?