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Comment by lemevi | Hacker News Reader

I am turning 40 in a year and almost everyone I work with is 15 years younger than I am. My opinion is that you have it all wrong. I don't think younger engineers are hostile to old age, but culture fit is important. It's not about your age but how you carry yourself. Until you're in your 70's you can probably afford to make an effort to understand the culture of 20 somethings. You can look to speakers at tech conferences and many are probably as old as you and I but don't have any problems fitting in with their younger peers.

You just have to be willing to adapt yourself to fit in with who you work with. If you aren't interested in making personal changes because you shouldn't think you need to just to earn a paycheck then well you're probably not a good culture fit. You need to make an effort. I enjoy the same things my peers do, we play the same games, we watch the same things and read the same websites. It's not fake with me. I'm not trying too hard. I'm just not getting stuck in old ways.

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"I don't think younger engineers are hostile to old age, but culture fit is important."

I'm pretty sure that is basically the definition of age discrimination people are facing. Its the same line given for other groups. This fascination with cultural fit which is basically group think given your examples (e.g. "I enjoy the same things my peers do, we play the same games, we watch the same things and read the same websites.") is disturbing and reminds me a bit too much of high school not business where experience and talent applied to implementation are important.

> I'm pretty sure that is basically the definition of age discrimination people are facing.

Age discrimination is based on a fact you can't do anything about, your age. A company's culture is very important, a vital aspect of its identity. If you aren't open to making a change then you probably don't belong. Anyway, a lot of things people my age and older like are just the things 20 year olds liked when they were 20.

Let's review a second so I can understand something, how does "I enjoy the same things my peers do, we play the same games, we watch the same things and read the same websites." equal a company's culture? The HP Way is a company culture, what you describe is a social club.

Many companies--especially tech companies--deliberately blur the line between those two things.

I'm starting to get that. They don't seem to want a company cultural. It really seems like they want a posse or fraternity. When you look at it that way, of course anyone outside a very narrow demographic is unacceptable.

Why does the image of a party of wizards that forgot to bring the fighters, clerics, and rogues come to my head?

Bull, if you can't get along with a wide range of people then you have a problem. I get the nerd stereotype of awkward introvert, but we, as working adults, need to deal with it.

> "A company's culture is very important, a vital aspect of its identity."

Is everyone being super-stoked about Star Wars and Breaking Bad really a vital aspect of a company's identity? Is a shared passion for ping-pong over lunchtime really an important part of a company's continued success?

In my personal experience, I've learned a huge amount from coworkers with whom I had very little in common besides the shared dedication to shipping great product.

Here's my challenge to everyone on HN - "culture fit" isn't intrinsically a bad thing, but the term is vague and encourages all kinds of intellectually dishonest cowardice.

Stop using "culture fit" and instead use specific observations. "This person has poor hygiene" is a valid observation, "This person defended some really bad code despite reasonable criticism", "This person was openly hostile to one of the interviewers", etc.

"Culture fit" is a weasel word that is vague - sometimes intentionally so - and largely useless. Specify why someone is a bad culture fit with concrete observations. And hey, sometimes when you are specific to yourself you'll find problems in your own thinking (e.g., "This person totally glazed over at the pop culture references I made." doesn't even begin to pass a sanity check, but accounts for a lot of "bad culture fit" decisions).

I was going to comment something like that. He doesn't like Foosball - we can't hire him! But maybe "culture fit" means willing to work huge irregular hours. "old people" with a family probably won't go for that. As a developer I always try to avoid crunch times by planning ahead - guess I am "old".

> Is everyone being super-stoked about Star Wars and Breaking Bad really a vital aspect of a company's identity? Is a shared passion for ping-pong over lunchtime really an important part of a company's continued success?

This is a different argument than one about age discrimination. Whatever the culture a company and its employees adopt, my point is that it isn't necessarily age discrimination if you are getting the "not a good culture fit" feedback. It's not the number of years you've been alive so much as an attitude, which is something you can change. If you're unwilling to, fine. If this makes you mad, I'm sorry. However your emotions sway you, it is still not age discrimination.

But depending on how stringent your bounding box for "culture fit" is, you end up building an archetype for age, gender, education and ethnicity of your target employee.

The point is is that if you're targeting people who behave like you, have plenty of shared interests and reflect your own way of doing things, those people are going to end up looking a lot like you too.

I think the point that potatolicious is trying to make is that the ambiguity of "cultural fit" ends up becoming a path to hiring people who are very similar to yourself. An alternative approach would be to define explicit, concrete values that your company and team reflect, and look for hires that mirror those values instead of nebulous "cultural" fit.

>it is still not age discrimination.

The law may not agree with you. Ever heard of disparate impact? "In United States anti-discrimination law, the theory of disparate impact holds that practices in employment, housing, or other areas may be considered discriminatory and illegal if they have a disproportionate "adverse impact" on persons in a protected class"

People over 40 are a protected class in US employment law.

Now, policies that can adversely affect a protected class are ok as long as there is a legitimate job requirement. For example, being able to lift 50 pounds may be a job requirement that adversely impacts women and the disabled but its ok as long as the job actually requires heavy lifting on a very regular basis.

Otherwise people are free to implement policies that are code for discrimination such as "able to lift 50 pounds" for a desk job.

You'd have to prove in court a legitimate job requirement. I think proving" likes ping pong and beers after work" being a businesses concern may be an uphill battle even if you call it "attitude."

Once you realize your hiring practices may exclude a protected class you really gotta do a second look over and ask yourself if it is really a business requirement. Other shops are able to ship products with more diversity and less ping pong.

I would say that it is reasonable to assume the "not a good culture fit" IS discrimination until proven otherwise.

And once again, with the supposed shortage of engineers, why isn't the company adapting?

If everyone likes Star Wars then you can make Star Wars references and jokes in company meetings and announcements and expect positive reception. Any effective presentation requires a knowledge of one's audience. But it does seem kinda backwards to pick the audience based on their fit for the presentation rather than adjust the presentation to the audience.

At my present company the upper management is constantly trying to make jokes that the 20-somethings will get. That includes movie references and things which you know some of them don't really get (especially when they say "I'm told you all will find this hilarious"). It shows a willingness of those older, experienced people to adjust their presentation to the "culture" of the current employees. The overall culture of the company is still to have a lot of fun, just the jokes change a little as time goes on.

My current company's founders (and don't even get me started on that) love Star Trek. They use it as street-cred of their zaniness and quirkiness and geek-cred. It's used in company literature, it's used to make jokes, and it's foisted upon new hires as though it's actually important.

We apparently care more about Star Trek and culture fit than we do about writing maintainable code, selling product, or anything else we don't talk about much.

I now hate Star Trek (and I used to like it). :( :(

Well, to be fair, someone born in the early 70's or late 60's is probably more stoked about Star Wars than any 20-something.

After all, they grew up with the series.

Not among my friends born in that time frame. The whole prequels put me in the "fool me once" category, plus its J.J. Abrams who already destroyed the Star Trek we grew up with. If it gets good reviews, I will see it, but I don't know anyone who is stoked to see it.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the new star trek series... The only thing that made the newer star wars prequels worth watching were yoda fight scenes.

Shared experience is good for communication. Disparate experience is good for learning. A star wars joke can cut a 20 minute discussion to zero, just because "That's great kid, don't get cocky", communicates what might take quite a while to express.

It's a really delicate balance. "culture" can mean speed. I don't know of many organizations that do this, but it's certainly possible. OTOH, that locks you into a specific worldview, and can make you blind to problems. Diverse backgrounds make organizations much more aware, but less able to communicate that information quickly.

An example is when someone picks up a new language, and they try to explain the new constructs and philosophies behind the language. It takes a long time to explain why mapcar is cool.

Seriously. I used to enjoy Star Wars, Breaking Bad, LOTR, ping pong, etc. After working in this industry a few years I'm thoroughly sick of all of them.

At this point, for me personally, nerd culture in general can go fuck itself. It's just no fun anymore now that it's more or less a job requirement.

Culture fit is often just a euphemism for "we don't like you for a reason that would be illegal to state directly due to discrimination laws". A reason such as you're too old.

When did you ever have a company state any reason for not hiring you?

I could have worded that better, it's not what's stated to you, it's what people say when they talk about not hiring someone to other people they know, such as those talking about it on this board now. It's a nice little lie people tell to avoid admitting discrimination of some sort.

Emphasis on the phrase "culture fit" tends to go hand in hand with cultural and racial homogeneity in my experience, too.

It's interesting how many red flags a company can throw up so quickly. Often before you've even finished browsing their website.

I think "culture fit" here is a replacement for: "He isn't young and single and probably has a family, therefore he won't want to work 70 hours a week and stay in our awesome fully stocked with free soda and snacks office 24/7 and instead actually go home after normal work hours, and we can't have that."

Yeah, that too. It seems to function as a placeholder for any reason the interviewer might be ashamed to admit in polite company.

Not all companies are like that. We put a huge emphasis on culture fit but it's nothing like what you suggest. We've gotten far more diverse as we've grown.

What is your definition of culture fit then? Be specific about traits which are indicative of a good or bad culture fit for your team/company in particular.

Is this person going to be goddamn annoying to be around 40-45 hours a week? (Oh, how this has happened.)

Does this non-medical phd demand to be addressed as doctor? (Yes, this happened.)

Does he or she seem willing to do his or her share of the scut work?

Is he or she a failed academic who is getting an industry job and going to be a pain about it, or is this what he or she wants to do?

How much supervision does the candidate require? Initiative? If he or she runs out of work, is he or she going to to sit there and do fuck-all until I notice or will the candidate be proactive about getting more to do?

I understand some of our code is under tested, but unlike TDD wankery, there is a real business cost to spending a bunch of time writing tests and, since those systems are either mostly finished / slowly changing, or on their way out, is this candidate going to be difficult or suck it up and deal? (Yes, this happened. See also scut work and/or the realities of living in our fallen world.)

We've made a decision to standardize on scala/java and js/some frontend package I'm not sure of. I understand this isn't react or the new hotness; does this candidate seem like he or she will throw a fit then spend two months working on a service in a language nobody else uses (yes, this happened. And he was surprised when he was terminated. There were other issues but this was the proverbial straw.)

Hygiene. This should go without saying, but apparently I am cursed. If I can smell you in an interview, we're done. (And yes, this has happened.)

One more set of edits as the bad memories come back:

You look at my two female data scientists and a female engineering peer and the one female office manager and ask why there are so many secretaries working here? Yes, this happened.

You call one of my female directs "sweetie." Yes, this happened.

We're talking on the phone and you couldn't be arsed to spend 10 minutes on our site and come up with a 1-2 sentence summary of what the company does. You can be wrong, but you must demonstrate minimal interest. And to be clear about the level of detail: if I were airbnb and you said platform to allow people to rent out their homes for short stays, that would be awesome.

I don't think any from that list is really cultural. They range from basic professional behavior to basic polite society behavior. I've run into people with the hygiene part. I've dealt with farmers who have just dealt with their pigs that smelled better than some folks I've encountered.

Also, "sweetie", really? When I was younger (teens) I offended someone by saying "Ma'am"[1], but I'm pretty sure I would have took a swat to the head from my parents if I ever said "sweetie".

1) I'm pretty sure at this late date (20+ years ago), she was a bit ticked that I used "Ma'am" instead of "Miss" implying she was older than she was. I'm pretty sure she was between 18 and 20, and I was 15 and looked a lot older.

Professional and polite behavior is cultural fit :) Or at least the working definition at this and previous employers where I've been a hiring manager.

>I don't think any from that list is really cultural

It looks to me like a laundry list of requirements that they wouldn't admit in polite company or want to have documented in their company records, or advertise on their website.

They wouldn't want to put off any investors with bad breath, a PhD, or a penchant for saying 'sweetie', after all.

Also, one of the items clearly advertises an objective deficiency in their working practices. It's pretty plain why they'd want to keep that under wraps.

So yea, less about culture and more about having a list of hidden requirements.

> Does this non-medical phd demand to be addressed as doctor? (Yes, this happened.)

WTF is wrong with that!?!? It is polite to address someone the way they want to be addressed. I address my PhD holding colleagues as Dr. very often though none are medical doctors. I can't imagine how this is an issue for anyone ever.

Unless you're an MD, I'm not calling you doctor, and it's a 5-nines indicator you're a jumped up prick. In english, Dr. is a honorific reserved for MDs, dentists, and psychiatrists.

If you ever have to work in an academic setting then you will probably see a lot of folks requiring the title. It's a pecking order thing and there are rules.

I get that there's an academic pecking order around this. But I work in industry and see previous post about people who couldn't hack it in academia and want to come to industry and treat it as if it were academia. They will not work out, and I'm uninterested in having their pecking order games in my team.

If there was any confusion, I most definitely meant in an academic setting, and would not generalize my answer to other settings.

Everyone different ideas.

This is what Miss Manners says:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/miss-manners-...

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My future sister-in-law just graduated with her PhD She told me to call her “doctor,” but I was always told that if you don’t work with someone directly in their field, that doesn’t apply.

Is that true? I understand it’s out of respect, but I have never addressed other persons with their PhD as “doctor.” They also put PhD at the end of their names, teach at universities and don’t go by “doctor.”

GENTLE READER: There are two attitudes that individuals and universities take toward the use of the title “doctor” for those who hold PhDs.

One is that having been earned, it should be used, not only in professional situations when needed for identification, especially in academic positions, but also socially.

The other is not to use it — not socially, but especially not in academic positions, because that level of education being assumed, it need not be expressly mentioned. As one professor (namely, Miss Manners’s Uncle Selig) once put it, “A PhD is like a nose — everyone has one. It’s only conspicuous if you don’t have one.”

Which form of snobbery is preferable, or perhaps more effective, others can decide. Obviously, your prospective sister-in-law espouses the first-named approach. And she is covered by two rules:

1. Address people as they wish to be addressed.

2. Try not to annoy your relatives unnecessarily.

I get the feeling in my extended family that words would be spoken to the sibling to indicate that the future sister-in-law was either "too big for her breeches" or the sibling might want to reconsider the whole thing. No disrespect intended to either the future sister-in-law or Miss Manners, but family is first names or nicknames.

You're conflating personal and professional. In your private life, you're free to be a prima donna and demand whatever your family and friends will put up with. At work, you're not, and unlike Ms Manners, I'm neither your friend nor a family member that has to humor you. Demanding that people play status games is going to get you a fiat no-hire from me, in part because you will find many of the tasks beneath you. And such a person would be unlikely to tolerate calling his or her managers Mr. / Ms. X. As should be obvious, if being called doctor is a deal breaker for you, there are lots of other employers. I think you're unlikely to find many in the valley that will tolerate such nonsense, but it's a free country -- anyone can keep looking until he or she finds a company that tolerates it.

"Culture fit" in this case appears to mean "don't say or do anything, no matter how minor or symbolic, that might be construed as a challenge to my authority over you".

i.e. it's a big fat euphemism.

Just say "no prima donnas" on your list of requirements. Most people will be able to read between the lines and know that you're looking for servility, fealty and obedience in your employees. I, for one, would be happy to screen you out based upon those words. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like me, I wouldn't like you and I wouldn't want to waste your time or mine interviewing with you. Those three words would save us both a lot of trouble.

I, OTOH, am appalled by how the medical profession has stolen the title 'doctor.' A doctor should be someone who has expanded the sum total of human knowledge by performing original research; an MD is just a technical degree.

I always refer to those who have earned an MD as 'physicians' or 'surgeons.'

When using last names, sure it's fine to insist on Dr. Smith over Mr./Ms. Smith.

But if everybody at the company is on a first-name basis but you insist on having everybody call you Dr. Smith, you're being unreasonable.

I don't think its unreasonable to request someone address you with a professional title in a professional environment.

"We're on a first name basis here" is cultural, unlike the other stuff mentioned, so there's that. But its pretty bizarre.

Would you also fire them for wearing business attire instead of shorts because "this is a casual environment?"

What you describe isn't culture fit, but not hiring arseholes. 'Culture fit' suggests traits that aren't suitable for your company, but are suitable for others. Your list is a series of bad points for pretty much any company.

> Hygiene. This should go without saying, but apparently I am cursed. If I can smell you in an interview, we're done. (And yes, this has happened.)

Just a note: sometimes this is BO caused by medication. You want to avoid saying "I didn't hire you because you smell" because that may be a result of a protected characteristic. A reasonable adjustment would be that the person has a trusted friend who will tell them if they smell or not, and will shower before they get to work and will use deodorant products.

A bit less common would be "fish odor syndrome" or Trimethylaminuria. http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/conditions/fish... You probably don't want to be cruel to people who suffer from an illness that they have no control of.

Back in high school I worked with a guy who had BO. His roommate (who I also worked with) told me that he didnt actually have a hygiene problem. Showered every day but for some reason he still had BO. I'm not sure how true that is but thats one data point.

Since some food and medicine can cause your pee to smell really weird it makes sense it can screw with the smell of your sweat too.

>I understand some of our code is under tested, but unlike TDD wankery, there is a real business cost to spending a bunch of time writing tests and, since those systems are either mostly finished / slowly changing, or on their way out, is this candidate going to be difficult or suck it up and deal? (Yes, this happened. See also scut work and/or the realities of living in our fallen world.)

I had a feeling that somewhere along the list of "candidate must not make us put up with any of their bullshit" there would be something saying "candidate must be willing to put up with a metric ton of our bullshit".

Allow me to highlight what I wrote:

   either mostly finished / slowly changing, or on their way out

Most of those old systems support a part of the business that is dying and are maintenance only, but occasionally they do need some extra duct tape. We minimize any investment at this point. At this point it's a day or two of work a month spread across a team, but everyone takes a turn.

I don't see the point. Either shut it down completely because it's not worth the investment to maintain or do it properly.

Test driven development is a practice that is most valuable on legacy code. Only doing it on new code and not old code is ass-backwards. If anything it should be the other way around.

A half assed hack job to support remaining customers will likely only end up alienating them when you inevitably break stuff they rely upon with duct tape. Alienated customers tend to drop you forever and run into a competitor's arms. YMMV but that's always been my experience.

The point is money. It shouldn't be hard to imagine a business that is earning money but will never again grow, is worth no further investment, and is therefore being run out. I reread what I wrote; you appear to be deliberately obtuse.

fit the culture is just pc phrasing to dodge hiring issues. its a cover, nothing more. some people saying it may believe it to be a true concern but its just code for "we don't want your type"

Indeed, I find it a big red flag when I hear mention of "efforts" to reduce homogeneity. Frankly, any mention of any "social engineering" terms is a big red flag for me.

The only thing that matters is professionalism, work-ethic, and skillset (and my personal favorites, politeness and personal-space respect).

Age, race, gender, nationality should not matter in any way for hiring decisions. But then again, I fall into the "leave it be" side of human freedom and anti-discrimination efforts, rather than the "let's meddle and try fix it with reverse-effects" camp.

People who are all alike tend to have the same blindspots. If you have a group with different POVs, they can more easily catch things that others might miss. Race/gender/age/&c.-related blind spots may be more important in some domains than others, but these blind spots are very salient in a wide variety of places in American life.

Focus on cultural and racial diversity in my experience tend ignore age as part of diversity. Lets not pretend 'they' would actually give a fuck about older developers.

Here is a "diversity team" http://diversify.github.io/images/diversify-group.jpg

Beware of hypocrites abusing "diversity" for PR reasons.

I was a bit shocked by that photo until I went to the page itself at http://diversify.github.io/ and read:

> Diversify was a weekend event at Spotify in Stockholm, where 40 tech students of diverse backgrounds came together and designed, wrote code, and found new friends.

Maybe having students to this is in part pointless, but that picture is not of a group of Spotify employees working on diversity issues.

It's interesting that you bring up 'group think.' I immediately thought of my back country avalanche training and how deadly 'group think' can be when I read your comment. I wonder if organizations built around a 'cultural fit' are hurting themselves in the long run.

Culture is based as much by the outliers as it is the core group. Also experiences/opinions offered by those outliers can be quite useful to avoid the herd mentality.

I've seen too many folks rejected as "cultural mis-matches" not because they don't get along with everyone else, but because they have different interests outside of work. That's just silly.

Maybe that isn't all the inaccurate of a dismissal, if the culture there is work to the bone, then somebody with non-work interests would certainly not enjoy the culture there. Not saying that I endorse that kind of culture, just that "culture mis-match" might just be the most accurate statement at that point.

Most accurate, perhaps, but also quite likely the least relevant statement. You're not looking to move in with them, after all.

If you'd like a really simplistic example of why that form of culture just doesn't matter, have a look at Adam Savage and Jamie Hineman(sic). They have never even had dinner together, yet they make for a very effective team at work.

Penn and Teller are also known to only be business partners and don't communicate outside of work. They are however extremely successful and prolific.

Then come out and say it.

I'd be all for the phrase "culture mis-match" being banned. If you can't properly articulate why you don't want to hire someone, then the problem is with you, not the applicant.

Diversity isn't about making personal changes to fit in with a group that is different than yourself.

> You need to make an effort. I enjoy the same things my peers do, we play the same games, we watch the same things and read the same websites

I really don't see why colleagues should read the same websites or play the same games! You can have a very good work relationship with someone that has a totally different lifestyle.

I'm 40, and this year I finally feel the pressure. I grew up in a world without google. My first instinct is to figure out a solution to the problem - and it's really hard to break that habit.

Although the strategy had served me well for a very long time, it just doesn't work these days. What's more important is one's ability to be resourceful - to google the quickest.

I don't mean that as a negative - some of these 25 year olds just blow my mind with how fast they can find the right code snippet that they need and integrate it using specialized IDEs. It's not that I can't do it, it's just not a skill that I have strength in. And, in a way, I doubt I can gain it.

The squeeze comes from salary and title. At the top of the pyramid, it's hard to gracefully slide down. This is a world where it's up or out.

You might not sense anything at forty especially if you're one of these youthful "40 going on 27" types, and the mid 20's people pretty much accept you as one of them. People's stereotypical ideas of what forty looks like doesn't match all the examples of what forty actually looks like.

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