“Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
rachelbythebay.com
“Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
1–10 of 133 posts
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#2I think “culture” is a vague word that can be made to do a lot of work, a weasel word. Culture as a reason for not hiring someone strikes me a very suspicious. There should be a concrete reason the person is not fit for the work as part of a no-hire decision.
“Culture” should be an emergent property of the people who work at the company.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#3You’d be amazed at corporate ability to find excuses for their canaries departure. Sometimes to the degree that you could be forgiven for assuming their goal was downsizing without layoffs.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#4Cuture fit is a blank check to fail a person's interview just because you didn't like them in the first 30 seconds. Short of the candidate showing some glaring interpersonal issues (I once had a guy who used the word "fuck" during his interview like 100 times) it is categorically impossible to establish in a 45 minute interview whether a person is actually a "fit" or not. So it's mostly a legitimized form of hiring bias. Too old? That's a poor "culture fit" right there.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#5Absolutely. Azure? “We take care of technical debt as we go”? You don’t know your engineers retention off the top of your head, but half of the projects I’m supposed to interface with have lost their tech lead and you can’t replace any? I’ve asked a non-technical executive what is a rollback and they didn’t know?
It’s not me, darling, it’s you.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#6I'm self taught and have been doing this for 20 years. Most of that in a sort of survival serial startup mode that eventually stabilized into me having a clue around the time I turned 30.
I got hired a few years ago for a senior dev/architect/ops + engineering manager position at a ~5 person startup despite the fact that I was "a bad culture fit" because most of the staff was phds or masters level educated. At the time I found it really offensive that they'd even say that. The CEO said in the same breath "I think hiring you is the closest thing I'll get to cloning myself." Talk about mixed signals!
As it turns out, that assessment was solidly right. They were entrenched in policies and behavior that basically guaranteed a tragic failure. And because of those policies the rescue from mistakes always fell on my doorstep well past when it would be trivial to solve the problem. This created a horrifically unpredictable work environment.
All and all, it was a growth experience and I probably gave the company a year of life it wouldn't have had otherwise. I would never take another job where that was said to me though.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#7The thing is, homogenous teams perform better than diverse ones, contrary to the common agenda these days. But you can't say I want everybody in my team to be more or less same as me, same culture, same behavioural codes, same common sense and all those things that makes a team perform smoothly like a well oiled machine. So instead they invent all kind of terms and roundabout ways to get to the same results while preaching to the masses about diversity and all kind of nonsense like that.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#8> Also, due to the continued rampant mistreatment of people under our visa situation (ranted about elsewhere), a lot of them have to put up with far more shit.
That is perhaps the understatement within the whole article.
The ability to push some people further than others before they tap out, results in an environment where that is the normal level of stress.
And those who can survive it, but don't want to tend to be marked out as "problems", instead of acknowledging that the insanity is temporary and everyone should/will take a break to recover instead of just burning out one person at a time, while keeping the hiring pipeline trickling in to cover that.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#9Throwaway account for obvious reasons.
I’m mid-way through my first experience with this. Some warning flags to add for anyone wondering if it’s them or you:
- You’re beginning to wonder if it’s you that’s crazy, despite successful previous roles.
- Their conversation has moved from “we” to “I” (or “you” and “us”).
- Your number of known unknowns (usually people- or business-based) suddenly spikes for no apparent reason
- Other people become (comically) formulaic in their response to questions.
- Feedback channels are quietly shut down because they’re “not really needed/too much process/etc”
I’ve started thinking of it as “professional gaslighting”, though its motivations may not be that sinister. My main mistake was not listening to that feeling that “something is wrong”. It’s surprisingly prescient.
Re: “Culture fit” is a two way street (2018)
#10Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I’m mid-way through my first experience with this. Some warning flags to add for anyone wondering if it’s them or you: - You’re beginning to wonder if it’s you that’s crazy, despite successful previous roles. - Their conversation has moved from “we” to “I” (or “you” and “us”). - Your number of known unknowns (usually people- or business-based) suddenly spikes for no apparent rea…
Don’t forget about these https://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html