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Comment by gz5 | Hacker News Reader

The article is great but the statement that most folks feel cultural fit is about "hiring people you'd want to have a beer with" doesn't resonate with what I have experienced. Is that how "most people" define "culture fit" in your experience?

For example, we do hire for culture fit, but we define culture fit along vectors such as:

+ How do you attack problems + How do you communicate and collaborate + How do you deal with rainy day scenarios + How do you learn and grow + How do you teach and mentor + What do you need (and not need) from your teammates + What type of work enviro do you thrive in

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>Is that how "most people" define "culture fit" in your experience?

The issue is many companies that rely on "culture fit" don't objectively define what it is. So it often becomes a dumping ground for whatever dumb biases and subjective criteria folks involved in hiring might have.

If your company actually has a hard definition of your internal culture and uses that in comparable fashion across candidates, I don't think that's what the author means.

well, if it gets me a job I otherwise wouldn't get (not enough experience etc.) I won't object.

Until you don’t get the job you would otherwise get based on your skills.

I had the impression, to get ahead in life you need to take on new challenges, which requires you to do things that is a bit above your skills.

If I would always get assesed based on my skills, I would now do the same things I did years ago.

And even if it does, as an applicant I know to look up your "core values" and give examples of how I embody them. "Sure, I know how to work hard to hit goals, because this one time..."

The same exact problem exists with technical skills, so I'm not sure why you're singling out culture fit.

And when companies do add objective metrics like whiteboard problems, everyone freaks out how it's not comparable "real world" (aka subjective)

Whiteboard problems are not objective. They have multiple solutions, and a human subjectively judges how good the given solution is and how good the thought process behind it was.

I've had countless number of times where I've had to sketch out an architectural design both during an interview and during my job with CxOs. Being able to communicate your ideas are important in the real world.

On the other hand, I had one whiteboard interview where I had to write psuedocode for a merge sort. I was offered the job but I turned it down.

While I do agree that the same problem exists with technical skills, I think it's a larger issue with the "culture fit" concept.

As someone else commented, culture fit often seems to end up being a dog whistle.

The types of things you mention seem perfectly legitimate. For example, I've advised someone who I knew from a previous employer who I knew needed a lot of structure and direction to not apply to a company that I knew was considerably more... chaotic.

If you tell me your company culture is an open office and you do lots of get-togethers in the evening and focus on working together on everything rather than going off and working on problems individually for a while, I'll probably pass.

> The types of things you mention seem perfectly legitimate.

I certainly assume OP's team is well-intentioned, but I'm skeptical that hiring for uniformity of "how do you attack problems" or "how do you learn and grow" is a good idea.

My hope is that the OP meant that they test that people can attack problems, and can learn... rather than aiming for the team to do those things homogenously.

Personally I'd disassociate those things out of any umbrella assessment of "fit" and just assess them as independent skills during the broader hiring process.

Right. But the fact that you and your colleagues care that people can attack problems and can learn is what the culture is. You would be surprised, some cultures are built with a desire for 'follow the leader' mentality, and do not care if you can attack problems, as long as your willing to obey.

Unless you can quantify it, it doesn't really matter whether the criteria is "would enjoy drinking with" or some other subjective X-factor.

The big problem with "culture fit" in interviews is that it gives you an escape hatch to avoid the conclusions that concrete objective assessments provide.

Candidate did poorly technical qualification challenges, but man were they great to talk to at the interview! Fuck it let's hire! Candidate did great on the technical qualification but hrm they have a family and live out in the suburbs? Meh let's pass this time and maybe come back to them later.

You might as well not be hiring rigorously or objectively at all.

My experience running concrete work-sample-based resume hiring programs (we're hiring now!) is that every force in the institution you're working for is going to push you away from trusting your assessment results. And if you can't rely on those results and learn from them, you can't iterate and get better at hiring. And indeed, most organizations never do get better at hiring, and draw from the exact same pool of "conventionally hirable" candidates everyone else does, and it's a disaster.

Maybe they want to hire based on potential. If the candidate simply hadn't had exposure to the particular technical questions that were part of the standard interview, but did display a good general intelligence level and overall comprehension in related fields it might be worth hiring them and bringing them up to speed.

We hire based on potential. An older example: at Matasano, we built one of the industry's few crypto consulting practices --- it hosts Thomas Pornin now! --- off a team of people who had, prior to Matasano, never worked on any cryptography at all. Empirical hiring processes don't preclude aptitude assessment; in fact, I think they make it substantially easier, by creating measurable objective facts that you can rely on to take "flyers" on people whose resumes and interviewing skills don't do their talent justice.

If you want to hire based on "intelligence" (ick), create an assessment rubric that surfaces the kind of intelligence you're looking for. Don't rely on face-to-face meetings to do that; it doesn't work.

Really interesting, and congratulations.

Did you hire on any sort of "personality fit" at all? I.e. would you hire a technically brilliant asshole?

Personally, I really try to be objective, ask the same questions every time, etc.. but lately I realized that if you're going to be spending 40+ hours per week with a person, it's not just the matter of them getting their job done...you also need to be able to work together, and that does require some amount of congruency in personality styles

There are lots of non-technical reasons we wouldn't hire someone, but they're straightforward enough that we can list them up front before meeting a candidate, and they're mostly objective.

right, that sounds like a great rule of thumb!

This is so refreshing to read! I was smh while reading the whole thread, got to your comment and was reminded there is some sanity left in the world after all.

“Cultural fit” is just a marketing term for personal bias.

If the hiring manager doesn’t drink beer, they aren't looking to hire someone to drink beer with, they will tend to hire the person who also doesn’t drink beer...conforming to their personal bias. Of course that has nothing to do with qualifications, and it is to damning to admit personal bias...in comes “cultural fit” which sounds sophisticated and in the interest of the company.

Talk to the same people promoting “cultural fit” about diversity, and watch the mental gymnastics of them simultaneously claiming they want diversity of candidates, diversity of thought/experience...so long as the diversity falls within the scope of “cultural fit”. It’s a lot like university giving professors tenure, sure you can have tenure and be protected from termination based on individual opinion after you prove to the university your opinion conforms to the university’s way of thinking and “fit”.

How do you assess how someone attacks problems?

How do you assess communication and collaboration?

How do you assess handling of "rainy-day scenarios"?

How do you assess learning and growth ability? Just how long does your interview take?

How do you assess teaching and mentoring ability?

How do you assess whether someone thrives in your work environment?

Everybody says they assess for these things, push comes to shove. But most of the time, they're really covering for the fact that their final decisions are based on a collective gut-feel assessment.

In my experience ""hiring people you'd want to have a beer with" is exactly what many people on the business side mean by "cultural fit."

I think your definition is true for technical hires for tech firms. For everyone else, the "beer" definition is operative.

I feel like for most devs culture fit means somebody you'd like to write code with. We work in a fundamentally collaborative industry and I think people realize that. The only times I've been worried about somebody's "culture fit" were times when I worried they wouldn't be easy to collaborate with.

Your definition is the right way to do culture fit. However, many companies, especially startups, use culture fit as a catch-all for "do I like this person?" without any clear fit criteria.

Culture fit is about creating a group of people who like each other enough to be willing to work free overtime together, sometimes out of feelings of duty to "the team".

This has varied over time. I've found that it's definitely more about "who you'd like to have a beer with" at early-to-mid stage startups, and becomes more about actually being someone you'll both be effective working alongside, as well as being someone you'll enjoy* working with, as the company matures.

*enjoy here means that you'll be able to enjoy a non-toxic work atmosphere, will be able to provide and receive constructive criticism and comments about your contributions; the healthy working relationship does sometimes lead to enjoying having a beer with them from time to time, but the former is definitely the primary goal in trying to find a culture fit.

The beer thing happens at almost every job, it's just human nature.

People also seem forget that it goes both ways. For example, we had a candidate come in. He had good technical and communication skills, he could get along. I had zero doubts about his ability to perform the job well. I didn't hire him because I thought that he would would leave because due to the lack of cultural fit and to the fact that cultural fit was a deal breaker for him.

I didn't ask him about his interests. Instead I asked him questions about who he worked with, conflicts he had to solve with past co-workers, etc. He opened up and talked about close friendships at most jobs. He had two jobs where he didn't stay long. When he talked about those, you could tell that he got along but didn't have much in common with his co-workers. So I called his old bosses and one said "Oh, he was great, learned quickly. I wish he would've stayed." When I asked why he left, he said "Well, we're mostly in our late 40s-50, we have families, I don't know if it was the right fit. He wanted somebody to get a beer with after work and go camping on weekends."

“People I’d want to have a beer with” seems like a decent proxy for “people who aren’t assholes.” Nothing wrong with turning down a candidate because he seems like an asshole.

That itself begs definition. How do you define an asshole? Someone who is genuinely a true brute and awful person? Or someone who stands by their standards and does so firmly because they believe in their personal principles?

I ask that question that specifically because the latter I have been told point blank is definitely asshole behavior. To which I say "it depends". Standing up for your principles and not capitulating to someone arbitrarily projecting their expectations onto you? That's not asshole behavior. That's standing up for yourself. Some seem to think otherwise.

Letting your principles take place of basic tact, dignity and respect for others? Different story. Some still even in this regard...think otherwise.

So how are we defining "asshole" tendencies here? Seems to me just as abitrary as "culture fit"

I don't think anyone defines an asshole as:

>[...] someone who stands by their standards and does so firmly because they believe in their personal principles?

That's integrity. Being stubborn and abrasive about it, however, isn't the same thing as having integrity.

Paraphrasing something I heard on the point: 'most people interested in being brutally honest are more interested in being brutal than being honest.'

Agree. Some of the most effective people can be "assholes" when they stick to their principles in the face of pressure.

Being an asshole about it is easier. But you don't have to be. Someone who can be principled without being an asshole is a true gem.

I agree with this also. Very rare

A subjective definition seems fine. If I’m the one who has to live with him, my definition controls.

It's very difficult to judge a candidate during an interview on those vectors. It's much easier to tell whether they look/sound/act like the people you work with, whether you're doing it consciously or not.

At a recent job the engineers were asked to look for new candidates from their social networks at the same time as we were asked to look for more diverse candidates. I pointed out the inherent contradiction, and was met with effectively a shrug.

"hiring people you'd want to have a beer with"

In consulting it's "wouldn't go crazy if stuck in an airport for 12 hours with"

That seems like a strange standard, considering the airports in question are likely to be so large that one wouldn't be stuck with those colleagues any more than with any number of random travelers, which could vary minute to minute.

the airports in question are likely to be so large

You might be surprised. In my years as a consultant I would often be flying out of airfields that were little more than a shed near a runway. Not all the time but probably 30-40%.

I was thinking the airports in question would be large ones for connecting flights.

I would be very surprised if one were ever stuck at such a small one for 12 hours. Presumably one would just return to town and be stuck there, instead.

Ha I remember one client, the only thing open after dark was a roadside strip club. Never got stranded at that airstrip fortunately!

"+ How do you attack problems"

This is objectively not 'culture fit'

> + How do you attack problems + How do you communicate and collaborate + How do you deal with rainy day scenarios + How do you learn and grow + How do you teach and mentor + What do you need (and not need) from your teammates + What type of work enviro do you thrive in

This is exactly what I (and hiring managers in my company) mean when we say "cultural fit". The thought of having a beer with them or other social activities doesn't even cross my mind during the interviewing process.

I don't know if I'm just unlucky, but most of the (Seattle) startups I know have a heavy drinking culture, and have alcohol at the office, so it's literally true, and perhaps used as a proxy for "will this person regularly stay late at the office (because they want to drink, and will end up doing extra work, too)".

This seems to be quite hit and miss when I've looked around at work cultures in Seattle, free beer at work correlating with working much past 4pm is a weak sign at best.

So you have a list of specific character traits that you're hiring for. That's great! Everyone should have that. So just use that list as hiring criteria, and then you don't need to invoke "culture fit".

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