Hacker News Reader

Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

In my experience "Candidate X isn't a good cultural fit" has almost always been used as short had for either "I don't want us to hire them, but I can't articulate why in way I am comfortable with" or less often "What an asshole".

I don't think I've ever been part of a conversation about "cultural fit" that wasn't swimming in bullshit, or at least wading in it.

View on HN

A big classifier I've seen that gets put under "cultural fit" is the "it's not my job" problem. A startup can't have people saying that, but big enterprise companies live by it. Some people just can't transition from one to the other.

I've found in interviews that some people expect to do exactly what their credentials have prepared them for. At least for the places I've worked, that's insufficient for programming and other tech.

Do you mean that the candidate is too inclined to say "that's not my job" when they might be called upon to perform tasks that lie outside their narrow area of focus?

I'm not slamming someone for saying that. At a huge company they will be exactly right and may fit in great there. If they can't change that opinion when working at a startup, maybe they aren't the best employee #7.

"I like to work on a team with strictly defined roles."

"I like to know exactly what I'm working on from day to day."

"I prefer to have my worked planned out weeks/months/years in advance."

All three valid, but not necessarily great for a startup.

For what it's worth, I would enthusiastically agree with all three of those statements, and I have no desire to ever work at a startup. I did once, years ago, and I hated it. Never again.

I'd prefer to work for the most enterprisey company that ever enterprised. I'm pretty happy at the B2B telecom where I work now, even.

(And, yes, I'm agreeing with you and providing a data point in your favor.)

True, one of the few ways that I have seen "cultural fit" used meaningfully is in this context.

Hiring for a startup : "They seem like more of a big-company type"

Hiring for a big company: "They seem like more of a startup type"

It's not really company specific.

My first job involving any real technical work was as a PC repair technician in a small independent store. One day the owner told one of the other technicians to empty the garbage can because it was overflowing and everyone else was busy. The other tech refused and went on some bullshit rant about how he was a computer technician, not a garbageman. That made a real impression on me and since then I've tried to pitch in and do whatever needs doing regardless of whether it's in my explicit job description or not.

> I've tried to pitch in and do whatever needs doing regardless of whether it's in my explicit job description or not.

IME this is also how you have the most fun at work, provided that the "extra" tasks you take on aren't particularly unpleasant.

"Not my job" may be due to dysfunctional team dynamics, where team-members are not empowered enough to feel secure about their areas of responsibility.

Basically, a situation when the areas are guarded (via seniority, permissions, available info), yet the performance or interest is no longer there. This way the responsibilities are fuzzy on purpose. "A team-player doesn't say No... - if not you, then who?!"

Ideally, a collaboraive team should not restrict the information flow, yet that's how the hierarchy works. The Boss knows, the minions infer.

On a handful of occasions, I've said "yes" to hiring somebody, despite having a nagging doubt about them, because they seemed to have the requisite technical experience and interviewed OK, and I didn't feel I could justify saying "no" on the basis of an intuition.

In almost every case, they've ended up later either demonstrating some unprofessional behavior, like having an abusive temper, or been revealed to be incompetent in some aspect of the job. And yet, I still wouldn't feel comfortable turning somebody down purely based on a gut feeling. It's made me pretty uncomfortable about participating in hiring process at all.

At one shop, I think it was more of a question of, "Will this person work 70 hours a week as salary exempt."

If you have a toxic manager asking these questions, you get employees who will work long hours to fix bad planning decisions. If that manager makes the wrong call, they get an employee who refuses to week over 45 hours a week and they are usually let go so other people don't get the same idea.

> "Candidate X isn't a good cultural fit" has almost always been used as short had for either "I don't want us to hire them, but I can't articulate why in way I am comfortable with"

Either that or "I don't want us to hire them, but I can't say why because it would be against the law." "Culture fit" has mostly become a loophole for anti-discrimination laws.

"Culture fit" has mostly become a loophole for anti-discrimination laws.

Is this just gut feel, or based on actual data? Because it sounds contrary to the survey results described in the article.

There is no untainted data in the subject. Any company that finds itself systemically rejecting protected classes of people through the "culture fit" label is asking for a lawsuit if they made it known to anyone.

This is generally a problem with discrimination cases, it is extremely rare to find a real "smoking gun", usually it's just the end result that looks abnormal

Well, the whole 3rd paragraph of the article is talking about how a poorly implemented culture fit criterion can be a place for bias to hide. I would assume that that was meant to mean all kinds of bias, not just bias that has nothing to do with any protected classes.

The survey itself was all qualitative, self-reported data. People aren't typically aware of their own racial, gender, etc. biases, so one wouldn't expect to see that being something they up and volunteer in their responses even if it is a factor in how their "culture fit" screen works out in practice.

I mean, no one is going to come right out and say, "We don't hire the Irish" in such a survey.

That's a very uncharitable assumption. At a previous company, where I was involved in the hiring process, 'culture fit' almost always was either shorthand for perceived work ethic or lack of ambition. We were primarily concerned with two things: where are you now in your abilities, and where do you aspire to be in your career?

You don't need "culture fit" as an excuse to not hire someone you don't want to. If a hiring manager has an illegal bias, there are plenty of ways to avoid hiring a particular candidate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com