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We joke a lot about that after I was hired as a middle aged coder... during interview Boss: "so do you think you can fit in this culture?" Me: "You mean, do

We joke a lot about that after I was hired as a middle aged coder... 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.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Often companies actually do care more about optics than productivity. I’ve definitely worked in large, successful companies where wearing the skinny jeans and drinking the smoothie are vastly more important than your productivity most of the time. 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.
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  If you're the person getting stuff done, while others aren't relative to your output, you make others look bad which certainly doesn't help you 'fit in' with the culture.
- komodosquirrel 8y ago
  I see that in start-ups. Their workforce must look "fresh" and "cool", "Instagram ready". This supposedly brings money apparently bored with life Angel investors love to burn. In those companies your product is a lifestyle for investors, what you are actually making is secondary. If someone is talented, it is a worst place to be in.
- meowface 8y ago
  But have you seen this sort of thing at a company that wasn't dysfunctional or unsuccessful?
curun1r 8y ago
Over time, I've realize that this view of work/team dynamics is overly unsophisticated. People are all really unique and viewing them as simply work-accomplishing units misses a ton of the nuance in creating a successful team. 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.
- wrs 8y ago
  I guess I’m an “older coder”, though my knees are doing OK, but never in my life would I have wanted to work at a place where there’s mandatory attendance at ski trips and zip-lining. That sounds utterly awful. Maybe you’re attributing something to age that is just a matter of taste? And maybe that’s not a good way to limit your hiring?
  - curun1r 8y ago
    Nothing was mandatory and, in fact, the team leads purposefully organized events to be inclusive to everyone on the team. That was the whole point...by including an older, less-physically-capable team member, it was no longer an option to do fun, youth-oriented team events. 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. The team had a 20s-oriented culture and all but one team member participated. You can call it age discrimination, but he didn't fit the culture. And by trying to force him into the culture, with the best of intentions, the company lost the rest of the team to other positions/companies. 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.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

Often companies actually do care more about optics than productivity. I’ve definitely worked in large, successful companies where wearing the skinny jeans and drinking the smoothie are vastly more important than your productivity most of the time. 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.

mgkimsal 8y ago
If you're the person getting stuff done, while others aren't relative to your output, you make others look bad which certainly doesn't help you 'fit in' with the culture.
komodosquirrel 8y ago
I see that in start-ups. Their workforce must look "fresh" and "cool", "Instagram ready". This supposedly brings money apparently bored with life Angel investors love to burn. In those companies your product is a lifestyle for investors, what you are actually making is secondary. If someone is talented, it is a worst place to be in.
meowface 8y ago
But have you seen this sort of thing at a company that wasn't dysfunctional or unsuccessful?

curun1r 8y ago

Over time, I've realize that this view of work/team dynamics is overly unsophisticated. People are all really unique and viewing them as simply work-accomplishing units misses a ton of the nuance in creating a successful team. 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.

wrs 8y ago
I guess I’m an “older coder”, though my knees are doing OK, but never in my life would I have wanted to work at a place where there’s mandatory attendance at ski trips and zip-lining. That sounds utterly awful. Maybe you’re attributing something to age that is just a matter of taste? And maybe that’s not a good way to limit your hiring?
- curun1r 8y ago
  Nothing was mandatory and, in fact, the team leads purposefully organized events to be inclusive to everyone on the team. That was the whole point...by including an older, less-physically-capable team member, it was no longer an option to do fun, youth-oriented team events. 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. The team had a 20s-oriented culture and all but one team member participated. You can call it age discrimination, but he didn't fit the culture. And by trying to force him into the culture, with the best of intentions, the company lost the rest of the team to other positions/companies. 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.