At a place I worked not too long ago, they fired a guy after two days because he was clearly an extremely huge asshole and stoner, and the reason they gave was that he wasn't a good culture fit. But it was just a polite way of saying that they didn't want an unkempt, disorderly, drug addict.<p>Although, I must say, he did seem to be a fairly decent developer, as far as I could tell by talking with him over two days.
Coming from 4 years at a startup as emp#1 and looking again in Austin (engineering), if I hear one more time that "they loved you but didn't think you would be a good fit" instead of a real reason for missing the cut, I am going to go nuts.
I wrote about why we got rid of cultural fit interview here:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9851060#9853911" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9851060#9853911</a><p>a little over a year ago. The short answer was that we couldn't find a single thing that this interview helped with.<p>And since then I have yet to hear anyone give a reasonable answer as to what a cultural fit interview provides.<p>I mean by the time you are ready to hire someone, they've met the team and the team has already approved. We've already given them the hard sell on why they should work for us, infact this is what I spend half our initial phone screen doing, just selling the company.<p>Almost all cultural fit interviews seem to be a form of asking: "Can we figure out if this person will dedicate all their waking hours to our company", and that's just really sad.
I think this can be true in some cases; however, it's also nice to look for things like:
* Does this person think they're above grunt work / taking out the trash?
* Does this person work better in a position where they take on responsibilities as they see fit or would they rather have work given to them?<p>Neither one of those are captured in the "data-driven" hiring process; however, they are key in our particular company's culture. And yes... years of experience can be dismissed simply if the candidate thinks they're above everyone else.
I've studied programming my whole life. But somehow someone I've never met before can decide I don't know how to program after fifteen minutes of questions. Guess I need to go memorize the meaning of 'polymorphism' again.
I completely understand what he means, but his disdain would have a better effect if he compared the trendy "we don't take ourselves too seriously--see? Nerf wars and ping pong!" culture to the drab, grey, cubicle-dominated culture of the past.<p>Companies take note: be a fun place, but protest too much about your culture and risk becoming a weird hive-minded cult.
A longer-form take on this issue: "Inside the Mirrortocracy" <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7930430" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7930430</a>
Hasn't this always been the case? Companies that carry on the "80s SV hardware startup mantra" (AAPL, along with repeat founders in semi conductor sector) are definitely fiefdoms that reflect the character of the founder.
I mean, the creator of these seems like someone I wouldn't want to work with. There is a lot to be said about creating a culture in a company, and grooming said culture, and making sure to preserve aspects of it you see as powerful for your employees...<p>The "culture" of an open source tech shop is vastly different than a typical .Net tech shop - the clients are different, the dress codes are often more strict in the .net shops, the hierarchy and "feel" is far more corporate... Those are different worlds, and trying to stick someone from one into the other inevitably doesn't work well... at least not optimally..