during interview
Boss: "so do you think you can fit in this culture?"
Me: "You mean, do I wear skinny jeans and drink kale smoothies? Probably not, but if you want your work done, does culture fit matter when you have a mile long back log?"
Boss: "good point, so... How does your schedule look for next week?"
it was all history from there.
Another big, obvious manifestation of this is open-plan offices.
“Does working in a noisy, open space that doesn’t actually save significant money relative to engineer salaries and lost productivity matter when you have a mile long back log?”
Yes, as it turns out, displaying the optics of looking visually like a hip start-up stereotype does matter more than the mile long back log.
On one team I worked in, we hired an older coder with bad knees and a couple of kids at home. Everyone in the team got along with him and generally liked him and he got his work done without too much fuss. But it was obvious that he didn't fit in with everyone else. We'd all hang out with each other socially (bars, clubs, weekend activities) and he opted out of those activities entirely and went home to his family every day at 5pm. And we saw other teams doing all these cool team activities (canyoneering, zip-lining, ski trips, etc) while we were limited to activities that were less physical and involved less alcohol. Over time, almost everyone in the team looked for opportunities to transfer to other teams (and sometimes companies) that looked like they were having more fun. Eventually, the team's output suffered as turnover increased, until eventually, he ended up leaving. The net effect was hugely disruptive to the company.
I can absolutely appreciate the argument that these culture fit tests become a way to discriminate against minorities, genders and people of a different age...and that's absolutely wrong. But we also need to accept that employees don't view work as a 9-5 working sentence that's completely separate from their life outside of work. To the extent that employees want work to be part of their overall lives, you need to hire a cohesive group. It's a hard problem to solve simply because humans are social animals, there's no universally correct answer and so much of our psychology isn't well understood by so many of us.
I guess what I'm saying is that many employees want their work to have a social component and will seek out employment that gives them that. So companies that don't include a culture fit criteria can risk alienating those employees. One would hope that a large enough company can use cultural fit as a sorting criteria more so than a filtering criteria. But the narrative that prevails here...cultural fit is just a code word for discrimination...feels too naive and lacking nuance. Human social interaction is complex and seeking to view workers as interchangeable cogs based on their capabilities to do work is much too simplistic. Which is not to say that cultural fit isn't an excuse to discriminate, which it often is. I'm only trying to point out that it's a really complex issue that has no universally correct side or answer. It's almost always situational and there's no blanket policy or rule that you can apply to address the issue. Trying to force companies to be culture-fit-blind causes its own set of problems.
And I say all this as a 40s coder, so I'm sure I'd miss out on a number of positions based on cultural fit.
On a practical basis, more “all hands” (aka mandofun) events do need to be inclusive. In normal companies at least. This is usually considered alongside basic personnel stuff like catering for allergies and dietary preferences at shared meals.
In my experience most organisations don’t have huge problems with this although the mandatory fun often isn’t.
I also believe that major company/team decisions probably shouldn’t be made at bars but I get that not all companies are for everyone.
Sounds like it was mandatory.
>And that person was excluded from work-related conversations that happened at after-work bar trips, which caused some awkwardness when the rest of the team aligned behind a significant decision and the excluded team member felt like he wasn't consulted.
If not going creates a problem, it's mandatory, period.
Additionally, arranging your work discussions and decisions around alcohol consumption can absolutely be considered religions discrimination as many people don't consume alcohol for religious reasons and you certainly don't have any business justification for it. Also discrimination on pregnancy status.
I'm sorry but "some employees desire youth-oriented forced 'socialization' after work hours" is not a justification for breaking the law, it just isn't.
What a bizarre claim. Your parent poster explicitly said they tried to organize group activities where everyone - including the old man with bad knees - could participate. Knowing this, it's safe to assume they didn't have pregnant employees (if they chose alcohol related activities while striving to include everyone).
> If not going creates a problem, it's mandatory, period.
Again, such a weird position to take. So, in your opinion, no after work events should ever take place unless every single employee is present at all times and during all discussions? After all, that's what you were referring to with that "problem": a worker who is not present at an after-work discussion, leading to a slightly awkward situation the next monday.
No disabled people nor pregnant women either then? This company is practically begging to be sued into oblivion.
Feel free to hang out with your friends at bars, but don’t make them mandatory for work. This principle is not complicated.
Woe unto your career if you ever try to start a family, or get injured ziplining, or develop liver disease, or anything else that would keep you out of the good graces of mandatory-after-hours group events.
To me that sounds like the team was pretty immature and ended up failing the team.
You can still do all of those things and work with people who don't.
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/inquiries_marital_status...
You're advocating age discrimination. Don't do it.
You know, the actual work you have your people do (along with the monetary compensation, and of course the extent to which they're pleasant to work with, you know, while at work) really (really) ought to be sufficient motivation to show up in the morning and get stuff done, over the longer haul.
By the same token -- if you feel you not only absolutely need extracurricular activities (let lone that your people need to "all hang out with each other socially" at odd hours of the day and night) to hold the team together... but feel the need to point to a deficit in this area as the primary reason why your team does not succeed... then you're definitely missing this bigger picture.
Eventually, the team's output suffered as turnover increased, until eventually, he ended up leaving. The net effect was hugely disruptive to the company.
Indeed. It sounds like you lost a good employee (and many others like him that he could have potentially recruited into your company) for the sake of the (perceived) benefits of maintaining a certain monoculture -- predicated in turn on a certain stereotype of fun and "energetic" younger employees. And how wonderful everything can be when you only hire people who fit that particular mold.
Work is for work, right?
If you create a "work culture" that defacto excludes protected class(es) (intentionally or not) without a legitimate business justification, you're breaking the law in the US. Sounds like this is what is happening, in this case the protected classes are age > 40 and disability status. You should take a break from the "canyoneering" and work on compliance.
It's also just bad business to limit yourself to hiring such a small subset of the population - people who are young, single, and bored enough to spend all their free time doing company activities.
The thing to be mindful of, especially when you're in your twenties, is those things you love about your work environment today, you may not like when you're in your thirties, forties, etc. I remember vividly and fondly of partying with work friends until the bars closed every weekend (and weekdays, too), going zip-lining, playing games together, and so on. I wouldn't trade those memories for anything, but I also would never want to relive that again.
My point is, have fun, enjoy your youth, and make some good memories. But don't discriminate against others who just want to be professionals and do their job. One day it's very likely you will feel the same as they do...