What I've done should be proof enough.
It really isn't. It may be indicative of your technical ability however your past experience doesn't give me any indication if you'd be a good culture fit.
It really isn't. It may be indicative of your technical ability however your past experience doesn't give me any indication if you'd be a good culture fit.
Just like in social situations you can judge anyone pretty well in the first 5 minutes of a phone conversation, see if they will "click" with your team - hell you can almost do that just by looking at their open source (how they think/design). I don't need a high school coding exam and a 2 hour panel interview to see if someone is a "cultural fit".
I'm sure that's the case in rare circumstances. The phrase 'cultural fit' is fairly common here in the UK but I agree it may be taken a bit too literally elsewhere. The cultural fit I'm referring to is attitude, work ethic, maturity, etc.
I don't need a high school coding exam and a 2 hour panel interview to see if someone is a "cultural fit".
Completely agree. I can't see how that scenario could give anyone an appropriate insight into a persons character. As explained in other comments below, a relaxed, two way conversation in a comfortable environment is one of the few ways of establishing how well a candidate would adapt to life at your company.
While that may be, it doesn't mean cultural fit is only used in those cases.
There is a vast difference between someone who cares about doing their job well and someone who does their job. And 'cultural fit' will be used to describe that. Are you the type of person to put in your own time to advance your knowledge, or do you require the company to pay to keep you up to speed on the latest advances. I've seen both types of people.
And the former is more valuable than the latter. And the former generally won't want to work with the latter, either. Granted, the former will cost more than the latter, as he brings more value to the table.
You can argue the merits of 'cultural fit', but it's not just a word used to hide sexism, racism, and prejudice in the hiring process. And, personally, I think it's important because I want to enjoy the people I work with.
I like this as a definition of cultural fit. I have worked a place where I felt like the only guy who cared about his job, and it was suffocating, similarly, I have seen the one guy who is just doing his job in a team of those to love to do their job well, and he was like a ball and chain.
Perhaps we need to stop using "cultural fit", as a replacement for "professionalism". When I think about "cultural fit", I think, "what do I like, and does this person like it too?" When I ask myself and others, "is this person a professional", I think, "do they exhibit: passion, discipline, dedication, drive, and care in their work, skills, and interactions with everyone?" I would rather tell HR, "not as professional about his craft as we like to see", than a wishy-washy, "not a good cultural fit". The first sounds like we are professionals who treat ourselves, our craft, and others with respect, the second like a frat house blackballing a pledge because he doesn't like the same beer we all do.
> Why is that not enough?
Because they can find someone with the same qualifications that will also bring that passion.
I truly do not think it makes sense to demand every person on a job is passionate about the job they are doing. There have been many times I have had to (even at a job I normally loved) do long, boring, and fruitless work. I did not do them out of my passion for the "Mission to Save the World of Enterprise Banking", but because I am a professional who does what needs to be done and who does it to the best of my abilities.
When I said passion before, I was trying to express two things.
First, I was intending to express the attitudes that cause someone to stay abreast of their field, keeps their own saws sharp, (and ideally helps teach/inspire others to do the same), comes in and works hard, and pushes themselves and those around them to be better. Perhaps the best word for that is just professionalism.
The second concept is that I would rather be around someone who, while acting like a consummate professional, also enjoys at least some part of it. I love the fact that software development has more than I could probably ever learn, and it is a worthy challenge to seek to master its different forms. I have worked with several professionals who really do enjoy parts of the craft that I only barely tolerate, and I enjoy that about them immensely. They open to me a new worlds of appreciation for the craft. Just recently, I had to work on a few hundred legacy bugs for a few weeks in a row. They were unexpected, not caused by me, and deeply tedious. Some took hours to locate the cause. One of my coworkers really came alive doing that. He just loved the hunt and chase, like a detective working out a mystery. While I was mentally moaning and groaning after week two, he was just getting started. We talked about it for a few minutes one day, and I decided to try and see things his way. While it didn't cause me to love bugs like a fine wine, I was able to bring my attitude around from a silent scream up to mildly interested. Maybe the best word for that is having a good attitude? Enjoys some parts more than others, and keeps quiet when they don't enjoy it? I am not sure, but that whole concept I find to be important. The person who reads books about development and enjoys reading them is going to bring a wonderful attitude to the team, and can motivate others to pursue their own interests.
There is so little of a difference between those sorts of person that they are frequently the exact same person except on different days or in different working environments.
(FWIW, those two guys have turned out to be truly awesome developers).
Where is that line?
Looking at something dumb, like TDD. Is it okay to hire someone who doesn't "believe in TDD" when the rest of us practice strict TDD? Somehow, almost certainly based on nurture of past jobs/mentors/failures (we all like to think it is nature, pfft) all developers look at the same facts of TDD, and yet some are on this side, some are on that side. TDD is an arbitrary bar. May as well be favorite color. But, when the house painting team is 15 guys who like red and so we only paint red houses, but you like blue... Maybe they just are not a good "cultural fit". Shrug. Would that one blue person "poison" the team? On the one hand, that blue person might open us up to new opportunities, get us to start doing both kinds of houses. Maybe they just end up fighting with everyone all the time, "CAN'T YOU SEE RED IS THE BEST WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" And so cultural fit seems like a way of saying, "people similar enough to our average skill to not make anyone mad, and similar enough to an average of our shared backstory so as to have basically the same conclusions about the Big Issues as we do: TDD, FP/OO, Pairing, NoSQL/SQL, IDE/Editor, languages, what goes on the Big Issues list, etc.
But in all that, aren't we really just saying, "I want to hang out with people like me"?
This reminds me: I think I've yet to see a tech company where the default assumption is that you're a teetotaler. Why do y'all SV-ites insist on taking me out to consume (legal) mind-altering drugs?
Further reading (The “Leaf blowers for stamp collectors” thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6373983
The trouble is that, well, I hate to be like Kant but a lot of recruiters do just seem to have conversations that are very... spanish-inquisition-y... with virtually none of your personality there.
Like, when have I ever had a joke with them? Or an interesting discussion? When has a recruiter ever asked me about the people I work with/my friends? Or spent any real time talking with me my about my hobbies?
Hard to bring your personality out when people are asking you things like - "Would you consider yourself competitive?"
There's an underlying thing there where they're trying to guess at qualities they think contribute to behaviours they want in a very structured way rather than having a real conversation. And I'm sure we both know that people are more diverse than that, you can have lots of reasons for behaving in a particular way - not all of which the other person's going to be able to guess about.
It just feels really awkward, you know? You want to know how I'll fit in with your culture, invite me out for a glass of wine or something and we'll find something to laugh about. You want to get fake-happy-happy me then stick me in a horribly formal situation.
That said, I'm sure there are recruiters that treat you as human - and the more of them that are out there the better.
But it is completely unrealistic to believe that in a single meeting you will be able to predict with any certainty that a candidate will work well with your team, enjoy the position and remain loyal. You simply can't establish these things until a person is on the job.
If you do a good job not hiring obvious poor fits, the odds that your relationship with your new employee will be a fruitful one obviously increase, but don't fool yourself into believing that there isn't a lot of luck involved.
What does that mean, how is it determined via an interview and how is it weighted against all the other factors that make up a good hire?
When I look for cultural fit, I mean: will you have productive conversations with your colleagues; have you shown yourself to be inquisitive about new things beyond what you're assigned so that you have a good understanding of what a solved problem looks like; will you force yourself to find a way around hard problems or will you quietly give up and call the problem impossible or blame someone else; are you interested in solving customer problems and iterating rapidly, or in building the most "well-engineered" solution; do you think your role in the organization is to build products or direct them.
These aren't easy questions to answer, and they do open themselves up to bias in how you evaluate candidates. I like asking about folks' CV - even though there's already a written summary - to see what parts of a problem you considered most exciting and hard; I think that's revealing. But may not work for everyone.