Nearly every silicon valley interview is based on whether or not you are as hipster as the interviewer. Keep your head up and don't subscribe to the culture. You can be excellent and live as different as you want.
(1) Reading this article and seeing the comments, really helps me see how my daily work helps level the playing field and as Alibek says, change people's lives. Very fulfilling and thankful for that.
(2) Re: exabrial's comment above, where do you think culture fit should be evaluated in the process? Lots of interview processes today deal with culture fit at the end, but should it be item 1 and then coding skill item 2?
You can always say that some other candidate was 'objectively better' if you bring everyone in and give them a bunch of arbitrary challenges to complete.
If I wanted to make suing companies my job, I would have been a lawyer. I'm not going to sue you, even if you deserve it. It takes too much effort. What you should really be afraid of is me posting such a negative interview report on Glassdoor that you start having trouble finding candidates who want to talk to you, and then going to interview with your competitors.
After reading this a few times I think you meant to say "you're a big open-source advocate; are they an open-source shop?" or something similar.
Being from the midwest, doing interviews in silicon valley was like stepping into Charlie's Chocolate Factory at a few places in LA and SF. It made me smile to see people using their freedom to do whatever they wanted, but I really felt like -I- was being judged: you know for not wearing skinning jeans, feeling comfortable in my (literal) boots, being clean shaven, dressed in a long sleeve, and of course I have a soft spoken midwestern accent. You can't fake sincerity, and despite knocking the coding interviews out of the park, I felt like some (not all) of the interviewers were threatened by me somehow and mocked me gently with "well you did a really good job despite..." like they were talking to a three year old.
Really left a sour taste in my mouth how it seems the region preaches equality and acceptance, but that's only equality and acceptance of the non-traditional.
TL;DR: It's easy to say "We have a great culture" at your job if you hire hipsters homogeneously. The company I want to work for is color blind: we grow to appreciate each other. People of all walks, western, eastern, european, russian, christian, cat worshipper, whatever, just respect each other believe something different and learn how to communicate across these boundaries.
But, I'm decidedly not a hipster; no flannel, no beard, no skinny jeans, no boots, the sides of my head aren't shaved. I always had the impression that the hipsters were native to the west coast and it's always felt like I'm encroaching on their territory.
Most of the time people will pick up on someone's anxiety, lack of comfort or confidence, and start feeling uncomfortable in response. It's not really a personal thing, but it's hard for anyone to feel at ease in such situations.
Take two different people who have anxiety due to superficial differences, that wouldn't matter if they knew each other better, and that anxiety will likely magnify unless one person can break out of that mindset.
It's better to avoid simple explanations that rely on some sort of fundamental attribution error, because you'll come up with better solutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
Culture fit should be focused on areas of professional interest, general preferred work modes, and possibly professional ethos (e.g. you're a big open source shop, are they an advocate?).
Many interviewers and companies think culture fit applies to non-professional aspects like do they like bicycles, wear the same clothes, like the same music. Unfortunately, this is easily filtered through unconscious and unintentional racial, gender, and age biases because what the interviewer is really doing is determining if the candidate is "like me".
It's the second interpretation that annoys and intimidates candidates and is probably a root cause to much of the diversity issues faced by the tech industry.
We have a job that needs doing, and we evaluate whether candidates can perform in that position. Period.