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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

Not knowing a framework well doesn't imply someone's not a good hacker, but the reverse is generally true; the people you want to hire are the people who will have learnt the obscure cases, and who are good at explaining what they know.

I'm very sceptical of the ability to do a good, fair "culture" interview; I've never seen a cultural line that divides good hackers from bad, and it's easy to use "didn't fit the culture" as a cover for discrimination.

Project experience you often can't tell about, and passion is a red herring - the best developer I ever worked with was the guy who'd rock up at 11, hung over more often than not, slump in his chair and give every impression of not giving a damn about anything. He still got more done than anyone else, in higher quality, and teaching the rest of the team as he went.

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We don't do cultural interviews to determine if someone's a hacker, we do them to determine if they're a good fit for a team and if they'll be able to work in our company environment.

And passion comes in many forms - the fact that they were willing to teach the team alone speaks volumes. If someone didn't care about programming, they wouldn't want to spend the extra time teaching their peers about it.

I think what lmm is pointing out is that perhaps your "cultural interviews" might illegally shut out certain groups of people. For example, has the company ever hired a hacker over the age of 50?

The question is hypothetical, but lmm's comment is valid. A lot of companies use 'cultural fit' as a cover for discrimination. Plausible deniability isn't hard to find, but it's still an unfortunate practice.

The law can't actually do anything about discrimination as long as there is a slight professional veneer to cover it. Don't want to hire old people? Want to fire someone who doesn't like your ideas? There is a standard stock of phrases like 'cultural fit' which are unimpeachable in almost any context, and once hired, almost everyone is or can be construed to be in violation of some regulation. As long as you use the right words, don't let slip any stupid smoking-gun memos, there is nothing anyone can really do because it is impossible to prove anything.

The best protection is to be able to change jobs, and to stick with environments which do not contain toxic people who abuse their power or want to hurt you.

If you are older and a company does not hire you due to 'cultural fit' then you are probably dodging a bullet. Forcing them to hire you wouldn't make things better even if it were possible.

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