What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

Post by tmwsiy » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 3:35 AM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #162

SonnyWortzik wrote: post #119

We joke a lot about that after I was hired as a middle aged coder... during interview Boss: "so do you think you can fit in this culture?" Me: "You mean, do I wear skinny jeans and drink kale smoothies? Probably not, but if you want your work done, does culture fit matter when you have a mile long back log?" Boss: "good point, so... How does your schedule look for next week?" it was all history from there.

Over time, I've realize that this view of work/team dynamics is overly unsophisticated. People are all really unique and viewing them as simply work-accomplishing units misses a ton of the nuance in creating a successful team. On one team I worked in, we hired an older coder with bad knees and a couple of kids at home. Everyone in the team got along with him and generally liked him and he got his work done without to…

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 4:16 AM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #179

stcredzero wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience about 'culture fit' was that it was a code word for ageism. I've experienced people figuring out my age when looking at my resume, then weirdly warping the questions while accusing me of Googling the answers in response. (Based only on hearing me type. I was scripting a Python script to give the answer.)

I don't know what the situation was, but maybe you should have let them know that you were going to write a python script?

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 4:22 AM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #162

SonnyWortzik wrote: post #119

We joke a lot about that after I was hired as a middle aged coder... during interview Boss: "so do you think you can fit in this culture?" Me: "You mean, do I wear skinny jeans and drink kale smoothies? Probably not, but if you want your work done, does culture fit matter when you have a mile long back log?" Boss: "good point, so... How does your schedule look for next week?" it was all history from there.

Over time, I've realize that this view of work/team dynamics is overly unsophisticated. People are all really unique and viewing them as simply work-accomplishing units misses a ton of the nuance in creating a successful team. On one team I worked in, we hired an older coder with bad knees and a couple of kids at home. Everyone in the team got along with him and generally liked him and he got his work done without to…

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 4:26 AM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #136

stcredzero wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea knowing how to not acciddentally get an O(n^3) bottleneck is table stakes for development. It seems to me that a lot of younger folks want to lower the bar below that. If you're looking for devs to show that they understand the ideas, you'd be better off telling them the problem space ahead of time so that they can prepare for it, and then deeply questioning their knowledge in that space Perhaps combine that with…

Creativity comes from solitude not with a gun to your head.

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 4:33 AM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #139

stcredzero wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a seasoned expert who literally writes card shuffling software would have a difficult time writing a well-explained solution on a whiteboard in 30 minutes. Sure. We used to give an hour, and HR reduced it to 45 minutes. I'd rather have more time. Also, you can dial up the stringency of this particular question to an expert level where hours could be used. Or, as you admit below, it can be dialed down considerabl…

> understanding anything isn't required Things are truly understood in solitude not with a gun to your head. Also, what a developer knows this second has less bearing on what they could learn than often thought. No one knows everything.