Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

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> "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).

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.

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). :( :(

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.

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".

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.

> 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?

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