You might have read in HN, in many threads, comments from people saying "I would NEVER work in a company that would do such things like X, Y, Z". The other day, the comments were about a company tracking the activity of every employee. Another day was about a company whose business model was invasive ads. Another thread was about a company forbidding work-from-home and expecting everyone to checkin at 8 am sharp. Another was about companies forbidding engineers to work on opensource on their spare time. The list goes on. These are all examples of "culture" in my mind. As one might say "I'll never work there, ever" - there are plenty of people that would and they do indeed. The difference is the "I would fit there". If I know that the company "requires" to work long hours, or doesn't want work from home, or expects you to be on call at any given time, or expect people to be brutally honest with each other - as interviewer, I would be mindful of someone who will not fit these criterias. And many of these criterias are not good or bad - see the being brutally honest vs we are respectful of everyone feeling: it's just that the "wrong fit" would be run over by the organization within weeks and would likely result in the employee to be dismissed. Everyone would lose.