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What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

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Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#91

Post by lovich »

stcredzero wrote: post #57
lovich wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem space for computer science algorithms is gigantic and many of these companies testing for this knowledge then immediately throw new engineers onto line of business CRUD apps and bug fixes, which rarely have the engineer implementing any of these algorithms from scratch. Unless you have a super targeted problem space that interviewing employees know about, then you are doing about as well as drawing a rand…

The problem space for computer science algorithms is gigantic and many of these companies testing for this knowledge then immediately throw new engineers onto line of business CRUD apps and bug fixes, which rarely have the engineer implementing any of these algorithms from scratch. A programmer worth his salt should retain enough 1st principles knowledge to not create a O(n^3) bottleneck in production or otherwise st…

I agree it speaks to bad interviewing, because these whiteboard interviews are a bad interview practice. Yea knowing how to not acciddentally get an O(n^3) bottleneck is table stakes for development. What we get however is you interviewing for a job to make data entry apps and they ask you to implement a variety offlood fill algorithms with modifications that force edge cases unless you work around it. Or you'll be maintaining a legacy application and then they ask you to work out a Month Carlo simulation on the board. Then on top of this, despite what interviewers say out loud, they almost always start looking at edge cases and if the interviewee does not work there way around them they are dinged for points compared to an interviewee who does deal with the edge cases.

The majority of development work does not have you working through every comp sci algorithm in existence on a frequent enough schedule that the average engineer, or even a great engineer, will remember them all. That is going to garuntees that interviews are a game of chance. The more algorithms and the trick question associated with them that you can memorize the greater your odds, but it's still down to luck of the draw for what questions you are asked.

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

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#92

Post by some_account »

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.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#93

Post by RobertRoberts »

kgilpin wrote: post #37

I'm in agreement with other commenters here that "culture fit" usually feels like a euphemism for something else. I think what it's really about is explained here in the article: "A single toxic employee who is a bad fit for the existing culture can tank the morale and productivity of an entire team. " So, is there really more to "culture fit" than the No Asshole Rule (1)? If not, can we start calling it what it is:…

Recognizing cultural differences is important. Some cultures feel that being on time is vital to running a business properly. Other cultures see schedules as suggestions and not requirements. Imagine 50/50 split of these two cultures trying to agree on something as simple as when and how to run a weekly meeting?

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#94

Post by DanBC »

ammon wrote: post #4
tyingq wrote: post #3

Interesting topic, but... "Among the 300 companies I spoke to, only 20% told me they engaged in screening for specific traits beyond soft skills." Not convinced self disclosure is the best way to determine what they actually screen for.

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.

Everyone says they only hire on merit, and then you double-blind their recruitment process and you see how different the sucessful candidates are from the previous process.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#95

Post by golemiprague »

Culture fit is what people really feel inside but don't want to talk about because the current religion dictates that diversity is the best thing for a company. The thing is, for most tasks, homogenous and cohesive team is much more efficient and performant. It is easier for most people to work with people who are similiar to them, both culturally, racially, temperamentally, IQ level and anything else you can think about. Companies, like countries tend to disintegrate when they become too diverse. Sometimes, small doses of diversity are necessary for break throughs and creativity, but it is small doses, not the main way things suppose to work day by day.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#96

Post by philwelch »

djsumdog wrote: post #30
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #12

> A company is its employees. This is a bit nit-picky, but I find it distracting when an article leads with a statement that strikes me as grossly inaccurate. Because if the rest of the article hinges on the accuracy of that opening statement, I'm likely to regret having spent time reading the article. Clarification: The reason I'm skeptical of that particular opening statement is AFAIK U.S. corporations can have ass…

I thought the same thing. A company is also its buildings, equipment, things that can be liquidated, it's founders, it's principal investors, etc..

A company whose value lies solely or predominantly in its tangible or liquefiable assets is a company that an efficient market will soon liquify, and thus ceases to be a company.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#97

Post by stcredzero »

hueving wrote: post #88
stcredzero wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is going to be so prompt and complete at forgetting everything, then they may not have a tickling awareness that something might be up when the occasion to apply 1st principles knowledge does arise. Seriously, if the algorithmic complexity of a shuffling algorithm is going to be a challenge, why even have a degree!? If someone is so good with the forgetting that they can't even apply "n choose m," just wha…

>algorithmic complexity of a shuffling algorithm is going to be a challenge, why even have a degree!? Because complexity analysis is a tiny part of a CS degree. A huge wing of our CS grad department focused on type theory and PL in general and could easily screw up a complexity analysis quiz like that because it's irrelevant to their day-to-day research/work.

Because complexity analysis is a tiny part of a CS degree

Yes, but it's a slow-ball pitch! What's the complexity of filling in an array with its indices? If a CS grad can't solve something just a little more complex than that (for a sloppy/easy version of the question, not the shuffling algorithm expert version) then just what the heck are they learning?

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#98

Post by cirgue »

kgilpin wrote: post #37

I'm in agreement with other commenters here that "culture fit" usually feels like a euphemism for something else. I think what it's really about is explained here in the article: "A single toxic employee who is a bad fit for the existing culture can tank the morale and productivity of an entire team. " So, is there really more to "culture fit" than the No Asshole Rule (1)? If not, can we start calling it what it is:…

Here's a concrete example: how does someone ask a peer to do something for them? There are a bunch of different ways this can be done, and only a small percentage of them fall into 'asshole' territory, but if you ask ten people to define the 'asshole boundary', you will get ten different responses.

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#99

Post by AlwaysRock »

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.

But saying, "We think you're too old to be a good culture fit" is illegal while saying, "You're not a good culture fit" isn't. That's likely why companies don't say so directly, no?

Re: What Companies Mean by Culture Fit

#100

Post by _audakel »

> Obviously, screening for specific personality traits has not kept Bridgewater or Stripe from succeeding. Uber, however, might be a different story. I am going to argue that personality trait screening may have harmed Uber.

I agree there has been turmoil that has been detrimental to uber. But maybe the fact they specifically looked for hard core, "won't take no for an answer" is the reason they reached massive market / valuation they did. Lyft choose the "friendly" route and didn't get anything close to Uber size/valuation.

I'm not saying this is the best strategy/ always works, but you are saying you consider stripe successful basically because they have not had turmoil/bad press, despite the fact they are a fraction of the value of Uber.

Tldr: you probably NEED aggressive, won't take no, type of ppl to grow to a Uber size as quickly as they did.

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