7 ms·

The new trend is hiring for "culture add" rather than "culture fit." In other words, not trying to determine whether a person fits in with everybody else, but

by jawns 5y ago

The new trend is hiring for "culture add" rather than "culture fit." In other words, not trying to determine whether a person fits in with everybody else, but trying to determine whether what they bring to the table is something new and beneficial. My own engineering team still uses the term "culture fit," but I recently helped refine our interviewing guidelines to make it more clear what we mean: "We are assessing the candidate's comfort level with our processes, priorities, frequency of change, etc. Assessments should never reflect an interviewer's comfort level with any candidate's culture, personal attributes, etc."

hunter2_ 5y ago
Regardless of what you aim for regarding culture, culture itself seems like the sort of thing that people can't readily change about themselves (just like you can't expect people to change their religion, even though technically they're free to do so in many cases), and for that reason, culture seems like it should be among the protected classes that shouldn't be used for hiring decisions. Sticking to whether they can get the job done, as cold as that sounds, seems most equal-opportunity IMHO.
- jawns 5y ago
  Culture is such a vague word, though, isn't it? In some cases it identifies a regional association (like Mexican culture). In some cases it's religious or social (like Catholic culture or Deaf culture). In other cases it has to do with socioeconomic status (like uncultured country bumpkins vs. cultured Ivy League grads), the arts (low-culture gossip mags vs. high-culture literary mags), or business practices (like a culture of secrecy or a culture of inclusion within an organization). Fortunately, the law already bans discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, and national origin, so that covers a lot of the legitimate cases where an attribute that has no bearing on a person's ability to perform the job cannot be factored into hiring decisions. But there is certainly a sense in which culture absolutely can have bearing on job performance. A company might have a culture of "move fast and break things," and if a candidate is not comfortable with that culture, then it would be to their (and the employer's) benefit to know ahead of time whether the job would be a good fit for them.
  - hunter2_ 5y ago
    I agree that the notion of culture has all these facets, and that we should only be examining the business sense in an interview. But I think of "move fast and break things" (and its kin) as needing quite trivial assimilation, so if a hiring decision cites a culture issue, it must be the type of thing that can't be trivially overcome, which is a situation that often contributes toward being protected (like the religion example) for reasons of equity. Whether it could impact performance is an interesting thing I hadn't considered, though. I suppose if a thing is out of one's control (i.e., the luck of what you're born into), we make it off-limits unless it affects job performance? I'm thinking in terms of how the law ought to be, not interpreting how it currently is. It's tough to reason about. "You theoretically could have gotten yourself qualified for this job, but you chose not to" is how I view the ideal rationale for not giving someone a chance, but even that is very problematic to deduce.
lliamander 5y ago
I like that framing of culture fit, and I think it is incredibly important as a candidate one should also try to answer determine that fit (rather than leave that up to an employer). I really like Randall Koutnik's list[0] of questions to ask your interviewer, as a good way for a candidate to assess the engineering culture of a company. [0]https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your-interviewer.html https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your-intervie...

by jawns 5y ago

hunter2_ 5y ago

Regardless of what you aim for regarding culture, culture itself seems like the sort of thing that people can't readily change about themselves (just like you can't expect people to change their religion, even though technically they're free to do so in many cases), and for that reason, culture seems like it should be among the protected classes that shouldn't be used for hiring decisions. Sticking to whether they can get the job done, as cold as that sounds, seems most equal-opportunity IMHO.

jawns 5y ago
Culture is such a vague word, though, isn't it? In some cases it identifies a regional association (like Mexican culture). In some cases it's religious or social (like Catholic culture or Deaf culture). In other cases it has to do with socioeconomic status (like uncultured country bumpkins vs. cultured Ivy League grads), the arts (low-culture gossip mags vs. high-culture literary mags), or business practices (like a culture of secrecy or a culture of inclusion within an organization). Fortunately, the law already bans discrimination on the basis of religion, ethnicity, and national origin, so that covers a lot of the legitimate cases where an attribute that has no bearing on a person's ability to perform the job cannot be factored into hiring decisions. But there is certainly a sense in which culture absolutely can have bearing on job performance. A company might have a culture of "move fast and break things," and if a candidate is not comfortable with that culture, then it would be to their (and the employer's) benefit to know ahead of time whether the job would be a good fit for them.
- hunter2_ 5y ago
  I agree that the notion of culture has all these facets, and that we should only be examining the business sense in an interview. But I think of "move fast and break things" (and its kin) as needing quite trivial assimilation, so if a hiring decision cites a culture issue, it must be the type of thing that can't be trivially overcome, which is a situation that often contributes toward being protected (like the religion example) for reasons of equity. Whether it could impact performance is an interesting thing I hadn't considered, though. I suppose if a thing is out of one's control (i.e., the luck of what you're born into), we make it off-limits unless it affects job performance? I'm thinking in terms of how the law ought to be, not interpreting how it currently is. It's tough to reason about. "You theoretically could have gotten yourself qualified for this job, but you chose not to" is how I view the ideal rationale for not giving someone a chance, but even that is very problematic to deduce.

lliamander 5y ago

I like that framing of culture fit, and I think it is incredibly important as a candidate one should also try to answer determine that fit (rather than leave that up to an employer). I really like Randall Koutnik's list[0] of questions to ask your interviewer, as a good way for a candidate to assess the engineering culture of a company. [0]https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your-interviewer.html https://rkoutnik.com/articles/Questions-to-ask-your-intervie...