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My favorite cultural fit failure was trying to opt out of the weekly mandatory surfing lessons, barely got my wet suit off before I was called to a Friday morni

• danpalmer 8y ago
  I think that's a particularly bad example, and I'm sorry you had such a bad experience of startups. If you had been asked a bunch of questions in your interview that boiled down to "do you like surfing", then you may have "failed" that interview, but that would have been good for you and the company as you ultimately did not have the culture fit they were looking for. Obviously desire and ability to surf does not correlate with software engineering ability (I assume that's what you applied for?) but things like communication, learning practices, candour, empathy, etc, can correlate highly.
  • sifoobar 8y ago
    It was worse than that, I relocated to another country for the job and they had just helped me setup a four month apartment contract. I was informed that they liked to go surfing together during the interviews. It just turned out that bobbing around in freezing water with surfboards shooting at me from every angle just wasn't my thing at all. Of course that's not the real why, my team lead was an arrogant and ignorant asshole who liked to throw developers under the bus to cover his own ass. Which doesn't work that well on people with a tiny bit of experience and integrity. But cultural fit, like codes of conduct is a fine tool when you want to get rid of someone.