In my free time I'm a musician. I play in several different projects, and know a lot of people who do the same, even making a living doing so.
There's a rule of thumb in that world: "Good hang, good music, good money: don't take the gig if you don't have at least two out of three." If the money isn't good, at least the people and the music are. If the music sucks, at least you can spend your money with people you like. If the people suck, at least you can justify sticking around because it's worth it as a musician and you're well compensated.
Working for a startup or small company is very similar to being in a band, in my experience. And in the beginning, the money isn't great, and so if you're going to be happy there you make double extra sure that the technology (music) and the culture (the hang) work for everyone.
I get what this guy is saying: don't handicap your ability as a team to grow and innovate just because a potential hire doesn't care about the kegerator, or cannot, out of nature or obligation keep the same crazy hours as other members of the team. But when the going gets rough, there's nothing like having a sense of mutual respect and understanding among team members. You do want your team to develop a sense of camaraderie. Likewise, you do want your new hires to be able to fit in and communicate in productive ways. You want your team members to care about one another.
I have been in on hiring people where 'culture fit' has been a topic. On at least three occasions I can think of people hired for a team where yellow flags raised during the interview under the rubric of culture fit actually did become problem later on: failures in ability to argue or communicate honestly or effectively; superiority complexes glimpsed during an interview turned into unneeded friction later on, etc.
On the other hand, there have been hires where the 'culture fit' issue was raised before the hiring which turned out to be unfounded.
I think the key is to truly understand yourself and your own group dynamics before adding more people to the soup.
> "Good hang, good music, good money: don't take the gig if you don't have at least two out of three."
I love that explanation.
I think the problem that most people get into is going after one of them alone or having one outweigh the others significantly. I have yet to see that work long term.
"I have been in on hiring people where 'culture fit' has been a topic. On at least three occasions I can think of people hired for a team where yellow flags raised during the interview under the rubric of culture fit actually did become problem later on: failures in ability to argue or communicate honestly or effectively; superiority complexes glimpsed during an interview turned into unneeded friction later on, etc."
Are these really culture fit issues, though? Does anyone pride themselves on having a culture of miscommunication?
Not a culture built on miscommunication, but there are typically going to be different norms around communication.
E.g. can you approach the C-suite directly, or have to go through their assistants? Can meeting participants cut things off if it's unproductive, or is that feedback shared privately afterward? Is really vigorous (perhaps intimidating) debate an expectation, or are people more laid back about discussing ideas? To what extent can you express emotions, and which emotions? Two companies can totally be "feedback-oriented" yet drastically differ on when, how, and to whom feedback is given/received—none objectively The Right Way, just different cultures.
To me this is all culture, hard to judge pre-hire, and hard to adopt if it's really not your style.
At the same time, these are all things that can be easily communicated after the person is hired. Nothing on this list should even be thought of when interviewing someone.
Well, to be fair, the article has a slanted view of 'culture fit'. While the article says several times that 'culture fit' can mean anything, the examples it gives keep returning to evening drinking, and implies bro-culture as the problem.
In the instances I encountered, 'culture fit' was the phrase we used to describe it. Communication style counts. Does the person have a sense of humor? I'm not talking about enduring off-color jokes or remarks, but are they going to be on the same page as the rest of the team about when it's ok to be a goof, and when it's better to just shut up and get work done? How does this person react to a crisis? Different teams have different tolerances.
If "hiring for culture fit" universally meant what this article says it means, then yeah, it's a bad thing to do all around. But the article seems to be more about the toxic cultures that some companies have, and how hiring more people that fit really well into that toxic culture just keeps it going or makes it worse. All good points.
It's not an argument against the idea of hiring for culture fit though- rather it's an excellent description of just how toxic some startup cultures can be, and how interviewers can abuse the culture fit concept (intentionally or not) to discriminate against people who are different from them.
>Parents, people of religion who don't drink, non-alcoholics.
Those are bad but there are also legitimate clashes of "culture fit" and almost every blog writer that complains about it is leaving it out.
For example, consider a software team writing rocket guidance software for NASA or SpaceX. They are very disciplined about bottom-up analysis, 100% code path coverage, proofs of algorithm correctness, etc. However, they interview a candidate that is somewhat of a cowboy coder (a duct tape programmer)[1]. He's smart and competent but he doesn't fit their culture.
The team can acknowledge that the duct tape programmers are not inferior to overly cautious and disciplined programmers. The team can also acknowledge that the fast-paced world needs duct programmers. However, they just don't need him on their particular team.
If pressed for reason for why they rejected him, it's very easy to fall back on the simple phrase "culture fit" instead of itemizing an inventory of intellectual incompatibilities. Teams can reject candidates for other reasons besides the He's-Not-White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant-22-year-old angle.
I guess they could add an adjective and say it was "intellectual culture fit" but that phrase isn't commonplace enough that people would instinctively use it.
Just consider that some clashes of "culture fit" are intellectual instead of ethnic discrimination and engineers are not always the best at articulating why they rejected candidates for legitimate reasons.
Sometimes "Culture Fit" is a way around age (or other discrimination).
Sometimes it really means you have a specific culture you want to maintain. But you better watch out if you do this, at some point, all the "yes people" in your culture will end up missing something that would be obvious to someone who doesn't fit your culture.
Basically, if you hire for "Culture Fit", you're saying that diversity is bad...
I have personally been discarded from a startup without even a phone interview, because of "not being a cultural fit to the company". What makes it more absurd (if possible, how do you determine "cultural fit" from a CV?) is that the position was remote. What makes it even more absurd is that the company actively used a software I wrote.
I deduced that "cultural fit" translated to the fact I was over 35.
Eh, to me fit comes down to that ineffable quality: chemistry. Chemistry can't be defined. It doesn't mean you're looking for people exactly like you... My office has a pretty diverse group. But the group gels because of interpersonal chemistry.
Frankly, my opinion is that fit is equally important as skill set. The difference between a good team and a great one often comes down to chemistry, which causes the group to come together under pressure, to support one another, to coach and help one another, etc.
Culture Fit itself isn't quite a bias, because some studies [1] have shown that it reduces employee turnover. Whether or not that causes other prejudices to be used is not really clear.
> Have an honest look at why someone doesn't match your expectations. Did they not match implicit or explicit expectations? If they're implicit, are they really a part of your company culture? If they are, why are they not explicit?"
I recently got a 'culture fit' rejection. Towards the bottom of the e-mail they welcomed follow-up questions from me. I would love to respond and ask the questions above, but I also believe most rejections in life are a good thing and if someone comes up with some ridiculous excuse like 'culture fit' I'm better off not working for such a silly company.
I don't mind going out for happy hour once in a while, I enjoy it, and would never give anyone a hard time that was drinking, say a diet-coke with lime. The writer seems a little sensitive to socializing/drinking though. Perhaps he doesn't realize young people like to "rib" those who are a bit different... I don't think they mean any real harm, they just lack perspective that comes over time. I've learned to ignore people's dumb comments, as I've made quite a few myself--hopefully they are decreasing over time.
However, in agreement I've noticed that a lot of company/startup "culture" tends to exclude anyone not a late-twenties white|asian male with skinny jeans. Here's a few job pages I've looked at recently:
Look at some of these photos, and struggle to find a team member from the majority of the population who is homely, or chubby, or female, or $other_minority, over thirty, or god-forbid over forty.
No wonder it is so hard to find people when you exclude 90% of the population.
"The writer seems a little sensitive to socializing/drinking though. Perhaps he doesn't realize young people like to 'rib' those who are a bit different..."
"Ribbing" a recovering alcoholic because they won't join you for drinks would be rather insensitive. By the time young people are old enough to be in the workforce, they ought to be a bit more mature than that. (The author mentions that "I've been a non-alcoholic for more than 16 years now".)
It was easy to find women in your examples, and at least one chubby person in all of your examples but Lifesum. Over thirty, over forty, non-Asians, non-Caucasians, these were more challenging or non-existent.
I recently interviewed at a company where I did the onsite tech interview one day, was then told I passed that and had to do a culture fit interview the next week. I did that, mainly with non-technical folk, and then got a standard rejection email the next day. I still find it a bit baffling - at the very least, they could've given me an idea of their culture (didn't seem very different from any standard issue tech company, IMO) and what exactly I was lacking.
That's part of the problem. How can you pin down what the person was lacking in that situation? Were they lacking "friendliness", "suaveness?" Were they not attractive enough? How many shortcomings which could be attributed to "culture fit" are actually things you could change?
Depends on the company you're interviewing with. But here's a description of how companies who insist on culture fit evaluate candidates.
Generally an onsite interview comprises of a series (minimum 2, may go up to 4) of technical interviews which might involve whiteboard coding or coding on a laptop (my current company use this approach - partly inspired by Stripe's interview process where candidates are told to bring their own laptops and use their language/editor/IDE of choice). The coding itself should take anything from 20 (very strong candidates) to 40 minutes, and the remaining 15-20 mins is used to ostensibly allow the interviewee to the interviewer(s) questions, and sometimes these questions/discussions are used to assess culture fit. Like, is the interviewee opinionated about something (which is them used to 'score' the interviewee between 1-10 on 'ego').
Some companies insist on 'lunch' with the candidate, which WOULD be nice if you're having lunch with your team members/engineers, but a lot of times these you're just shown the way to the cafeteria and told to help yourselves, where you find yourself among a sea of strangers laughing/talking about something and you try making small talk (if you're socially awkward or introverted, you fail this test right away). Now, not all companies' lunch interviews are this bad, but some just insist on one and do NOTHING to make the interviewee feel at home (maybe that's the whole point?).
Then there would be a separate 'culture fit' interview AFTER all the coding interviews, usually with the CTO/VP of Engineering/Director of Engineering. This would entail being either asked to rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 on specific tools/technologies, asked about how you deal with conflicts, how you disagree with others when you have to, what side projects you work on and so forth.
At some companies, a culture fit interview is an interview with non-technical folk, who'll ask you for the UMPTEENTH time why you want to work at this company, what are your hobbies, what do you do during your weekends/in your free time, what are your favorite bars, where do you hike/work out, what books you read, what artists you listen to yada yada.
Some companies also insist on the candidate grabbing drinks/breakfast with current employees. I've done a 'breakfast' interview where ALL the engineers were drunk to varying degrees (they'd just had a huge party the previous evening). Generally, this is again a way of seeing if the candidate is someone you'd like to grab drinks with, or would like to hang out with socially after work. Depending on the company, this might involve speaking about tech, or as often as not, not saying a word about the job and just treating it like an evening/morning with old friends.
It's hard to know what exactly to say, and one has to walk the tightrope between sounding and seeming confident and cool and NOT coming across as egoistic/too opinionated and obnoxious. A lot of times, the same answers garner different responses from different teams, and in general, I personally believe these kind of interviews/questions should be banned since it's really no indicator of skill. The people I enjoy hanging out with may not always be the people I want to work with 40 hours a week. Unfortunately, likability is a major factor that goes into the hiring decision.
" I personally believe these kind of interviews/questions should be banned since it's really no indicator of skill."
If it's between two people with the same skill level you obviously pick the person you can best see yourself working side by side with for the next years to come. There is nothing strange about this.
Be yourself and you will end up in a place where someone with your skills and personality will fit in
> The best way to avoid falling into the culture fit trap is to have an honest look at why someone doesn't match your expectations. Did they not match implicit or explicit expectations? If they're implicit, are they really a part of your company culture? If they are, why are they not explicit?
The reason many startups don't explicitly state their expectations around "culture fit" is that reasonable, ethical people would find them to be unacceptable. In some cases, these expectations are associated with criteria that companies are not legally permitted to use in making hiring decisions.
I thought of this too and I think it's true. That should be an indicator that it's not a good idea. The reason laws are in place to prevent discrimination of that kind is that people have come to the consensus that it's bad for society.
The article fails to realize that "cultural fit" is an ineffable, inherently implicit judgment. You can't reasonably make a checklist of "cultural fit" items for this reason.
More importantly, "cultural fit" is a good catchall for probably the most important aspect of hiring someone: Your instinctual, gut feeling about the person. Do they seem like someone you want to work with 8 hours a day? Is there something "off" about them?
These are incredibly important subconscious criteria that can't be explicitly codified, and the term "cultural fit" is a good umbrella term for them.
This implies that culture fit is a guise for discrimination. Which, let's be honest, is what it is in most cases.
An old person doesn't fit the culture of a young tech startup. A woman doesn't fit the culture of the executive level. A black person doesn't fit the culture of the new neighborhood. A guy that works out every day doesn't fit the culture of a disruptive and innovative company.
Whoa there, culture fit may be a guise for discrimination, but I don't think it's in the same sense you're referring to. Rather I believe it's along the lines of, 'we don't think you'll drink the kool-aid like the rest of us do', and regardless, just because someone is qualified for the job doesn't mean they're the right fit for it.
The article seems to exactly match your definition - something that cant really be defined, and therefore is probably not a valid criteria in which to judge someone.
'Instinctual, gut feels' can tap into gender bias, racial concerns, stuff you wouldn't rationally accept if you said them out loud. By discarding reason when evaluating an employee subconscious discrimination comes to the fore.
I think that's the point: You can't make an objective decision about it, so it turns into a bunch of feely stuff, and that's really bad to base hiring decisions on.
Because it causes you to skip over qualified candidates simply because they don't want to play ping pong all afternoon or partake in the office kegger.
I thoroughly disagree with this in the startup space.
Run a food startup? I expect the people there to be at least much more interested in the space than average, even if they're working on a purely technical role.
Music business? Events? Cars? Clothing?
Look, if you're going to be busting ass while getting funding and traction and you'll be inevitably spending a lot of time getting these things right, the kind of person involved has to have a personal interest beyond their job description. You need to understand customers and the business, and empathizing and knowing where to look in those spaces is more than just having business acumen.
You can hire without regarding culture fit if you're a medium-sized business and above where people have clearly defined roles and specialties. But when passion and interest are just as important as putting in the effort, I want to work with people whom I have more than just a cordial time at the office.
"Run a food startup? I expect the people there to be at least much more interested in the space than average, even if they're working on a purely technical role."
Actually, it could be an advantage to have people around who have only an average interest in your product - they can provide valuable insight into how the average consumer might react to your product. If your food startup is unconsciously geared toward the top 1% of picky eaters because everyone in your company belongs to that group, you're not going to have a very big market. If everyone in your car company drives a Ferrari, you're going to be at a disadvantage selling minivans to suburban parents.
By the same token I could tell you that those people have no idea what foodies are looking for or how to discriminate between good chefs and mediocre chefs, or how to talk the talk to relevant people in the industry. Or that they'll spend a lot of time missing targets in price points.
It is always better to have at least an above-average knowledge of any industry you want to be part of. The narrative of outside players coming in and having success is very nice, but it's based on the premise that the people involved were originally very passionate and picked up the ropes very quickly.
I have the same feeling... I've been to places with the expressed goal of understanding and integrating into the culture, only to find out after I've left that there were actually 2 groups within the company: those that wanted change and those that wanted things to stay the same.
I care intensely about cultural fit, but could care less about gender, ethnicity, race, political inclinations, sexuality, and other non-work behaviors.
I care intensely about a culture of automated tests, automated deployment, campsite rule (leaving something better than you found it), clean code, empathy as a core engineering principle, and other cultural issues where reasonable people disagree. I can respect Michael O. Church's opinions on agile, for example, but I think that we would be best fit working in different companies.
People when discussing this, make the mistake of thinking there's one best culture and if we all just moved towards that superior culture, everything would be better. Instead, I think there's such a thing as Product/Culture fit. Different cultures unavoidably product different products and some products fail in the market because the culture that produced it never achieve Product/Market fit.
Take Lyft and Uber for example. Both are ostensibly doing very similar things yet I know people at both and I can confidently say very few people could work happily in both places. If you work at Uber, you have to be OK with stripping an entire research lab to build up your self driving car department. If you work at Lyft, you have to be OK that Lyft hasn't expanded internationally yet as they're cautiously focusing on the US.
Even though Lyft and Uber are looking for the same skillset in their employees, the pools they're hiring from are almost completely distinct. People interpret "not a culture fit" as a negative thing, as if it's about that person not being good enough for the company's culture. Instead, when "not a culture fit" is said honestly, it simply means that, even though both of you want to accomplish the same things, you want to accomplish them in different ways and there's other, better places for your talents.
Similarly, companies should look long and hard at their Product/Culture fit and, if they do indeed find it lacking on some ways, actively recruit people who have the force of will to alter their culture. This is much harder, however and has to come from the top.
Culture fit is very important in any organization, or at least complimentary cultures. There are of course abuses in any kind of hiring process, but it's wrong to think that culture fit is responsible for this. When you're turned down because of culture fit, it's easy to get upset about it, but honestly, would you have wanted them to hire you anyways, knowing that they'd be 'tolerating' you? In the same vein, when a company does hire you, I feel like it's assumed that it's because you're technically proficient and can provide value; they usually don't say "we're hiring you because you're a solid culture fit" even though it's highly likely that you are, and that is a chunk of why they hired you. It seems like:
a) culture fit where you get hired == good
b) culture fit where you get declined == racist/ageist/sexist/whatever.
There's basically nothing more frustrating than being told you were passed over because you weren't a good "culture fit." The reason it's frustrating is that it gives you no information you can use to improve yourself. The basic take-away is that you should go away and become cooler somehow.
But do companies explicitly say that, though? From my experience working at a YC startup, the company just used to send out a canned rejection email, irrespective of whether the candidate was rejected because of a bad interview or because someone thought they'd be a pain to work with. The startup I work at once had a staff/lead engineer from twitter interview, and while some loved him, some didn't and he was rejected.
A reasonably professional person will follow up with rejection emails in order to determine what was lacking so they can work on it. Companies who reject people should be ready to give useful feedback that people can use to improve their chances moving forward.
Indeed, it is frustrating. It may give the impression that you are defective in some way (to improve yourself), but doesn't necessarily mean that. As the job candidate, I have declined offers because of culture fit. I have also left some companies due to culture fit. It's really a two-way street.
In a lot of cases, I think it's better to get rejected up front than to get hired on only to realize later on that you've landed in a bad situation. To me if a company wants to reject you based on culture fit, many times it's a blessing in disguise.
I just experienced this. To have gone through 8+ interviews over the course of a few months to find out that the firm essentially thinks you have a bum personality was quite the experience. Throughout my whole career, technical capability aside, my inter-personal skills have been what have really propelled me to where I am today. Some of the best Engineers I have worked with have had INTERESTING personalities and we have been able to get great stuff done despite potential incompatibilities.
In the end I'm glad it didn't work out, for one it grounded me, apparently my shit does stink. It also helped me recognize that I really do enjoy working with all stripes of people and would hate to give that up. I also feel like I get bonus points for not joining a cult.
Anecdote: I've been described by a recruiter as "a culture fit" (definite article and all), and not in reference to any particular job or company. This dude knew roughly nothing about me except how I looked and my generic California accent.
If you think it's about excluding people who have kids or don't want to drink all night you're actually giving them too much credit.
There's a rule of thumb in that world: "Good hang, good music, good money: don't take the gig if you don't have at least two out of three." If the money isn't good, at least the people and the music are. If the music sucks, at least you can spend your money with people you like. If the people suck, at least you can justify sticking around because it's worth it as a musician and you're well compensated.
Working for a startup or small company is very similar to being in a band, in my experience. And in the beginning, the money isn't great, and so if you're going to be happy there you make double extra sure that the technology (music) and the culture (the hang) work for everyone.
I get what this guy is saying: don't handicap your ability as a team to grow and innovate just because a potential hire doesn't care about the kegerator, or cannot, out of nature or obligation keep the same crazy hours as other members of the team. But when the going gets rough, there's nothing like having a sense of mutual respect and understanding among team members. You do want your team to develop a sense of camaraderie. Likewise, you do want your new hires to be able to fit in and communicate in productive ways. You want your team members to care about one another.
I have been in on hiring people where 'culture fit' has been a topic. On at least three occasions I can think of people hired for a team where yellow flags raised during the interview under the rubric of culture fit actually did become problem later on: failures in ability to argue or communicate honestly or effectively; superiority complexes glimpsed during an interview turned into unneeded friction later on, etc.
On the other hand, there have been hires where the 'culture fit' issue was raised before the hiring which turned out to be unfounded.
I think the key is to truly understand yourself and your own group dynamics before adding more people to the soup.