What Your Startup Culture Really Says: the toxic lies afoot in Silicon Valley

I'd like to preface this discussion with a simple question, "Have you experienced working a company where you did not fit with the culture?"

I think it is important to consider that question in the context of discussing culture because it is informs on the downside, or the negatives associated with a poor fit. From reading your response, and shanley's post, I do not see that experience in your writing.

Before getting to your specific argument, its important to know if you agree, or at least acknowledge, that a cultural misfit can be very impactful on how somone experiences a situation. The sexism of a 'brogrammer' culture, casual racism of a supremicist culture, or even the passivity of a conformance culture. So let us agree on what we mean when we say what is 'culture' and what is 'not culture.'

When I say that our company has a 'we have a culture', I mean it to encompass those "principles we value", the "expectations we put on behavior", and the "judgments we apply to our interactions". In its simplest form it defines the kinds of qualities and behaviors we admire in our co-workers and those qualities and behaviors we dislike. I would further stipulate that for any group of people who spend time together, the degree with which those values and judgments align directly correlates with the 'pleasure' of spending time together.

I think if you can't understand these claims about what I mean when I talk about culture, then its safe to say we'll not make a lot of progress :-)

So lets look at your argument.

You use as your first example, Max Levchin discussing the importance of a consistent culture at PayPal in the early days, and their decision not to hire someone because they called the game of basketball 'hoops'. And you agree with Max's claim that a small group of people that share a very similar culture are more productive. Then you add this: "But aren't the effects of this kind of fucked up? Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the fact that not making a job offer to a guy because he used the word 'hoops' is a little weird?"

What Max says in this is that the general consensus on the existing team is that sports are a waste of time. I know a number of engineers who hold that view, they are amazed you can earn 9 figure incomes by throwing a ball around. Max seems to recognize that if this candidate came in and talked about "march madness" (the NCAA Tournament) they might be chided or kidded for their enthusiasm, snarky comments would be made about going to 'waste their time bouncing a ball while the team gets the product done' or something equally lame. Max was protecting this candidate and protecting the team at the same time. People can be very passionate about sports teams, and not respecting their team, or their sport, often gets translated into not respecting them. That is corrosive.

Your second example came from a recent article that was shared on HN where the folks at Stripe talked about the 'Sunday Test' question. That isn't a candidate question, that is an interviewer question. The interviewer asks themselves, "Is this candidate so awesome that if they felt they needed to be here Sunday to get what they were doing done, would I want to come in here and help them get it done?"

I don't know if you read it that way, but it is a 'gut check' on the part of the interviewer to see if they feel the kind of chemistry (or cultural fit) with this person that would inspire them. Given the challenge of finding people, and the down side of picking poorly, it's a way to try to get around how much you might "like" their presentation to see how you really feel. That level of self awareness doesn't come naturally to people, so tools like this help.

So I think you answered your question, the effect is not fucked up, the effect is that the team doesn't get distracted and this possible future employee doesn't feel alienated. Paypal avoided hiring people who would feel bad at work, Stripe gave their interviewers a way to ask themselves "how do you really feel about hiring this person."

And yes, its about culture, but it isn't about lying, its about honesty and knowing how the current team values things.

You added, "Much of Shanley's post is about this sort of thing. She's not saying that meetings are great, or flat hierarchies are bad or that free lunches are bullshit. But she is saying that these things aren't 100% good. They come with some significant downsides that are rarely acknowledge inside of the 'everything we do is awesome' startup bubble."

And this is where I think we read different articles :-) Shanley was calling out what she perceived to be lies. She didn't call them "often misinterpreted statements" or "meaning perhaps not what you think they mean". She said, "This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and the materialistic trappings that can disguise them." and then goes on to assert that each sound bite is code for some rampant abuse of trust or an attempt at deception.

Shanley argument fails the test of truth, which is one way to analyze her rhetoric. She asserts time and again with the lead "What your culture might actually be saying is ..." So follow that lead. Now take any one of her sound bites and say "Ok we stipulate this is the actual culture." Now does it pass the sniff test? Does it even make sense?

Start with #1: We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit

Stipulate her assertion: We reject qualified candidates based on superficial and unimportant reasons.

Now go find a startup where this assertion holds and the startup has made it through seed funding much less a series A.

#2: Meetings are evil

Stipulate: We avoid projects that require strict coordination across the company so that we don't have to have meetings.

Find a company that does that.

#3: We have people responsible for making work fun.

Stipulate: A mostly female team exists that gets the mostly male workforce to stay late.

Etc, etc. They all fall down. Startups don't do those things, they can't afford to.

There is nothing in her article that supports any of her assertions, even anecdotes, its all snark as far as I can see, and by now I think I've read it four or five times. She is either very inexperienced, very hurt, or both, but I don't think she has surfaced any deep cover up or deception.

"> Stipulate her assertion: We reject qualified candidates based on superficial and unimportant reasons. Go ask a random person on the street if rejecting a job applicant because they said the word "hoops" is a superficial or unimportant reason. 99 times out of 100 they'll say yes."

Isn't that leaving off a bit of context? Ask them if "Hiring someone who plays hoops on to a team that thinks basketball is a stupid waste of time and recently campaigned against tax payer funding of a local venue for an NBA team." is a smart idea.

You don't walk into a room full of people playing Magic the Gathering and tell them you need three more for a bridge game do you? It's a group of Magic players, not Bridge players.

But the real point is that not being asked to join a community you won't fit in with is a good thing for you and for the community, and it says nothing about your "value" or the communities "value." All it says is that you don't fit there. Further, that "you" the random person, aren't a cultural fit for a group doesn't make that group evil, deceitful, or even wrong.

I understand the point you are making, I don't agree with it. I think 'culture' is a natural outgrowth of 'group' and is not only a reasonable discriminator for choosing to add someone too a group, but also for choosing not to join or to leave a group. That said, I do agree that there are unreasonable discrimination criteria, they are codified by law.

"She's not talking about a cover up. She's not talking about a bunch of evil startup managers sitting in a room thinking about how they can deceive their staff. It doesn't work that way. She's talking about the lies we all tell each other, and how those lies can have negative consequences."

You seem to have a good grasp of what she is thinking which is great, I just don't think she wrote any of what you are asserting as her thoughts, are actually in the text I read.

If "culture fit" starts becoming a shibboleth for prejudice, that's just fine with me. One problem my company has never had is discrimination, but the occasional genuflection to "culture" in our hiring process has always annoyed the hell out of me; it was never more than the excuse we made for making hiring decisions without evidence.

I don't support discrimination. If you have been a victim of discrimination (I have) it sucks, and I feel badly for you.

There are thousands of companies, some work hard all day and night, some have more family values, some see computer code as art, some see it as a means to an end, some aspire to operate as smoothly as possible, some as quickly as possible. Those with corrosive or illegal cultures, fade away. Sometimes not as quickly as we would like but they don't survive. There are many different ports in the world as sailors might say.

I wasn't being dismissive of shanley's article, I felt badly for her as it seems like there is a lot of emotional hurt around this issue for her. You, harryh, are also pretty invested in this issue as well it seems. I hope that you find a company that is a great 'fit' for you and have a really great experience of a solid company culture.

I was, as it happens, also that religion, but I was in the closet so they didn't know.

People of differing cultures can easily co-exist, just as long as one culture isn't trying to eliminate the other.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminationism