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Comment by ejr | Hacker News Reader

"You don’t fit in with our culture"

I've seen similar sentiment in many other places in tech, applied to ageism, sexism etc. Maybe I'm naïve, but I fail to see this in any way other than discrimination by proxy.

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Whenever I see this I wonder if getting sued for age, sex, or racial discrimination, and losing, does fit in with the company's "culture". That can be expensive. Very.

The percentage of people who would take that route is very small, I'm afraid. There are countless little insults and grievances that simply get shrugged off as the cost of living in society. It shouldn't be that way, but the punishment for bravery is just too severe.

If no one is hiring them anyway they have nothing to lose, and the payoff can be quite large.

http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20140227/66-year-old-m...

Note that insulting "jokes" were a factor.

I wonder what it would take for someone to flip and say "yeah, we discussed why we didn't hire that person, and it was <ageism, sexism, racism>." How much longer until you learn the real reason?

I once had a boss who didn't want to hire someone who had fought in Vietnam. Said boss had escaped the draft by being in college (and from a rich family). I was pretty shocked that he would say it out loud, especially by how much he considered himself super-progressive.

Culture fit can be important in a sufficiently small company. What's baffling is why anyone would say that out loud to a declined candidate.

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