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Comment by brobdingnagian | Hacker News Reader

We need to work together to make culture-fit a bad word. "Culture fit" means discrimination along dimensions that shall not be named, for were they to be named they would be illegal.

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It would be simple if this was always true. But you can have cultural differences along lines that are legal to discriminate upon (and I don't mean technically legal like sexual orientation, but along lines that most would agree was a good reason to not hire). But being that there are legitimate reasons to not hire someone that can be abstractly classified (like with 'cultural fit') and since there is an incentive for the employer to do such (giving a detailed explanation of why someone wasn't hired just isn't in the employer's best interest), there is going to be a smoke screen by which employer's practicing illegal discrimination will be able to hide behind.

Short of always requiring a detailed reason why a candidate was passed over, there will always be the possibility to fudge an illegal act of discrimination to look like a legal one (and even a detailed explanation requirement wouldn't fully fix the problem).

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that "cultural fit" is vague does not imply that it is about innate characteristics. There are infinitely many things relating to the way people work that are legitimate reasons not to hire. To take one of the most obvious, the difference between a startup veteran and a corporate veteran can make all the difference for the exact same job description.

What are your thoughts on hiring someone you want to work with vs hiring someone you don't want to work with?

Should depend on why you want to work with them.

You want to work with them because they are competent and results-oriented? Good.

You want to work with them because they are eager and capable? Good.

You want to work with them because they look kind of like you and like the same beers you do? Nope.

Let's just unravel what it means to not want to work with someone: you are chipping away at them as a person who is trying to survive. You are an agent of natural selection in action. If that's part of your identity, I think you're a jerk. If it's not, then hire them and offer to help them out. Don't try to change them too much - just bring them back within the normal range. Offer them CBT or just be nice to them. At the very very least, if you're not hiring someone because you don't think you can work with them, tell them, and suggest they get some counseling.

What happens when you want to work with is indirectly based on a protected class (for example, it isn't that you want to work with a man, but you want to work with someone who fits a list of qualifications that excludes most women but very few men)?

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