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

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.