What Companies Mean by Culture Fit • Hacker News Board

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#121

Post by adrianmonk » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

atomi wrote: post #58

bjornlouser wrote: post #56

Good culture fit is when we ask an employee to do something and they do it. A bad fit is someone who occasionally says no. A toxic employee occasionally says no and explains why they won't.

I've always thought being meek and obedient was part and parcel of working for someone else. But I think being a good culture fit is a bit more than that.

My theory is hire smart professionals, then treat them like they're smart and professional.

They should be expected to have an opinion and allowed to express it. If you don't want any of your ideas challenged ever, then don't waste your money hiring a person with a brain. And if you hire someone with 10 years of experience, hopefully you can appreciate that they've learned something in that time that give them a perspective you want to hear.

But, of course, after they've respectfully disagreed, they should also be ready to set aside their opinion and go along with whatever was decided. That comes with the professional part of smart and professional.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#122

Post by tzs » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #10

ammon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversations involved me asking them to talk through the details of their interview process and decision-making. I think there were good incentives for companies be honest (given the context of us matching engineers with them). I did the classification into types of screening after, based on my notes.

It’s still hard to know what this means. For example, all the senior engineers I currently work with are great at telling a story about how they look to hire based on talent, self-awareness, critical thinking, and many soft skills, and that the technical particulars are only incidental guideposts. Then they proceed to ask candidates to derive a card shuffling algorithm on a whiteboard in 30 minutes and fail them from…

> Then they proceed to ask candidates to derive a card shuffling algorithm on a whiteboard in 30 minutes and fail them from the interview if the running time complexity would be too high or if they can’t mathematically prove the result would be a uniform draw from the space of permutations of the cards.

I'd actually expect a surprisingly large fraction of programmers to be able to do reasonably OK on that particular problem--and I don't mean just those with CS degrees. I'm including the ones that are entirely self taught. In fact, especially those.

That's because so many of us, even those with CS degrees or other common degrees that programmers get instead of CS [1], started out trying to write games or other things that needed to shuffle, were sure that the obvious approach we took was right, and then found out it wasn't and why. It was our first personal encounter with the idea that you can analyze and reason about algorithms and their correctness.

In other words, shuffling was one of the first algorithmic "aha!" moments for many of us, and you don't really forget those.

[1] Mine is math, not CS, for example. Partly that's because when I got my degree, in the early '80s at Caltech, Caltech did not have an undergraduate CS degree. The CS department only offered graduate degrees. They had all the necessary undergraduate coursework available--they just had not yet put together a formal degree program.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#123

Post by rleigh » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC

bjornlouser wrote: post #56

Good culture fit is when we ask an employee to do something and they do it. A bad fit is someone who occasionally says no. A toxic employee occasionally says no and explains why they won't.

Why do you consider it bad to say no? Do you not expect your employees to exhibit independent thought and act professionally? If someone was asked to do something which was seriously wrong, wouldn't you want them to call it out rather than be a yes man and silently let something bad happen? If they explain exactly what's wrong and why, isn't that simply being professional? Or do you just want obedient slaves?

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#124

Post by zoomablemind » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

bjornlouser wrote: post #56

Good culture fit is when we ask an employee to do something and they do it. A bad fit is someone who occasionally says no. A toxic employee occasionally says no and explains why they won't.

That's exactly the reason why the culture fit is not clearly defined in companies.

Any newcomer brings a potential challenge to status quo. The 'culture' is in fact may be quite the opposite to the proclaimed values. This may not be visible(any longer) to those that 'fit', yet may be quite apparent to someone new. Hiring manager may not even realize what 'culture' has been fostered.

Team dynamics is a tricky thing. I doubt that any team would scout on purpose for assholes, yet many stable teams may keep one/some. Same at the other end. As long as the rotation is not high, the mix is the 'culture'.

That's why 'culture fit' is often invoked as a guise for something else short of discriminating answer.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#125

Post by ahelwer » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

some_account wrote: post #92

rmason wrote: post #90

My experience about 'culture fit' was that it was a code word for ageism. Sometimes they'd be even more direct if I pushed back. This wasn't at the end of a 45 minute interview, it was in the first five minutes after I'd already passed the technical review. Might not be true in every instance, but I absolutely cringe when I hear that phrase.

We may not like it but yes, age matters for culture fit. I prefer people saying so instead of giving me bullshit reasons.

If the culture is naive fresh-out-of-college engineers enthusiastic about being exploited by management, sure. Not sure what else it could be. Posting memes on slack?

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#126

Post by convolvatron » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

thereisnospork wrote: post #74

watwut wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If too many people are in conflict with existing culture, then maybe the culture itself is a problem.

Maybe, but cultures are relative. If a small subset of the population, 'assholes' prefer to work in an environment with other 'assholes' is it a bad thing that some companies nurture an 'asshole' culture? Provided nothing crosses the bounds of a federally protected class ofc.

if we temporarily define asshole to mean things like:

- narcissistic

- more interested in asserting dominance over other employees than advancing the good of the project

- likely to divert the project to advance some personal goals

- constantly generates interpersonal conflict

then yes, you aren't getting as much as you should out of your engineering organization.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#127

Post by chosenbreed » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

lovich wrote: post #102

some_account wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may not like it but yes, age matters for culture fit. I prefer people saying so instead of giving me bullshit reasons.

Might as well say "we may not like it, but yes, race matters for culture fit". Both are highly illegal and pretty unethical.

>...Both are highly illegal and pretty unethical

Agreed. But should they? I mean if I start a company with no recourse to public funds why should I obliged to employ someone I wouldn't want to work with? I understand why it is illegal. I think the ethics are debatable too. Most importantly, I think both are routinely violated under some guise such as 'culture fit', etc.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#128

Post by T-hawk » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

kingnothing wrote: post #108

some_account wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may not like it but yes, age matters for culture fit. I prefer people saying so instead of giving me bullshit reasons.

And that's illegal.

Only in some ways.

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act is much narrower than commonly assumed. It only forbids discrimination against workers age 40 or older. It does not forbid ageism for being too young, nor against a 39-year-old for being too old.

More generally: discrimination in employment is legal by default and excepted only by specific prohibitions, which include race and religion and gender but not much more than that. Here are some attributes that are legally perfectly permissible to discriminate either for or against: smoking, obesity, height, glasses, alcohol use, vegetarianism, sports team favoritism.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#129

Post by motohagiography » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

Culture fit is a euphemism for shared values, and those are a mix of where strategy meets background.

Trouble I have seen is that companies don't talk about those two things because they truly are the value proposition of the firm. Often this is not precisely clear.

The real strategy of a company is necessarily hidden, but the direction it yields is something people can align to, knowingly or more often, not.

Is the strategy to get acquired for IP or because they were positioned to execute in a growth market, or maybe to create or dominate a market? These are radically different, but you can tell by looking at a cap table and an office what their plan is.

Do they need people to not ask questions, or do they need compelling visionaries? Maybe they need people to keep the ball in the air, engineers to optimize and scale big ideas, or new blood in an ossified institution. Those strategic outcomes define culture.

When I hear people say, "culture eats strategy for breakfast," I always think, "yeah, without strategy, culture starves." As you can tell I'm a real hit at off sites.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#130

Post by grandmczeb » Mon, Sep 10, 2018, 9:28 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #110

grandmczeb wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What counts as "too many"? Different groups have different needs when it comes to cohesiveness. It's up to company leadership to balance that requirement with openness/ease of hiring/etc.

Simply said, if only very rare kind of personality fits your needs and level of cohesiveness, then it is very likely that your culture would be more effective if it changed. Chances are, the culture is too ossified or otherwise unable to deal with changes, problems, differences of opinion or other exceptions from routine. Different groups have different needs, but some of what groups call "need" is actually dysfuncti…

I think it's unusual for a company to weed out a large percentage of the candidates due to cultural fit, but if they are, I agree there's probably a deeper issue at play. Where exactly that line of dysfunction falls is company/group dependent though.