7 ms·

Never, Ever Compromise: Hiring For Culture Fit

31 points by yarianluis 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
But where is the evidence that creating a homogeneous, groupthink (I know the article said no groupthink, but come on) culture is actually better?
alanctgardner2 14y ago
I think "culture fit" makes this sound more specific than it is: it's mostly about interpersonal relationships within the team, and enthusiasm for the problem domain. For some reason the west-coast startup cargo cult seems to think that every company needs to be a unique and beautiful snowflake which offers niche perks and only hires (for example) ginger rock-climbers with astigmatism who like Devo. The fact of the matter is, half of this article is about the new employee getting along with your team. This doesn't necessarily require common interests, it's just about having similar communication styles, and to an extent values. The beer test is an excellent way to establish this. The other half is about hiring enthusiastic recruits, especially the 'green and keen' fresh out of college, who are willing to sacrifice their lives to ship. I personally don't agree with sleeping under your desk every night, or living in a perpetual crunch, but I'm lucky enough to have an interesting, challenging job where I want to work on related projects at home. If an employee is interested in the problem they're solving, they'll be more productive, regardless of whether they spend 8 hours or 12 hours at the office. In short, I like all of the content in the article, but 'culture fit' makes it seem like a mystical x factor, when it's really common sense.
luser001 14y ago
This whole article should have been prefaced with a giant 72-pt IMHO and suffixed with a 72-pt YMMV. I was amazed at recommendations #4 and #5: reward somebody for "fitting in" etc. (!!!!!!!) I highly recommend Andy Grove's "High Output Management" if you're really interested in building a high-performance organization. It's a highly objective book: don't waste time on voodoo like "Intriguingly, in a "social" environment, the candidate would often show more of their "true colors". Especially if beer was involved."
- SkyMarshal 14y ago
  Good recommendation, ordered. Recently this obsession with 'culture' among startups has been sounding more and more cargo-cultish. Grove is the real deal though.
  - jisaacstone 14y ago
    Ha! that is true. In my experience 'culture' means 'drinks microbrews and knows _all the memes_ '
    - snogglethorpe 14y ago
      Also, hipster glasses and at least one antique leather armchair in which you regularly sip your obscure single-malts.... [I totally love github as a service, their employees seem genuinely cool, and they apprently know what they're doing, but the pictures they post for every new hire are absolutely hilarious ... I think I could never work there because I just don't have all the necessary accessories...]
guylhem 14y ago
This is weird to read. What caught my eye: "For an early stage, raw startup, your hiring focus should be on homogeneity." then right away: "You should be encouraging a diversity of origins (gender, ethnicity, etc.)" I don't really care about one side of the argument or another, (homogeneity, heterogeneity) or even prejudices - but this seems inconsistent. If you are advocating cultural homogeneity, except for political correctness or legal reasons (ie to avoid being sued by applicant you rejected because of their gender or ethnicity), why do you argue for diverse origins ? Be consistent with yourself - it's A or B. If it's A and B you may not really have an argument. And I would really, really like to see facts supporting either homogeneity or heterogeneity. So far all I've seen are best described as case reports - no real trials with enough samples to have a good statistical power. Make teams of 100 persons, standardize on competence (SAT, whatever) then try and compare different mix of gender or ethnicities and pick up the top performing mixes. Do that multiple times. Then give a conclusion. That's an argument I will be able to believe. EDIT: some clarification - I don't care what anyone thinks/look like/believes as long as the person can deliver more than it costs, but I'm willing to consider that if conclusive evidence exists. The best I've read so far is a positive effect of homogeneity towards cooperation against others (parochialism). EDIT2: to avoid statistical backslash, I realize that due to higher standard deviation in small samples of a given population, underrepresented genders or ethnicities may show a higher variance - hence the need to standardize beforehand on competence to select test subjects over a threshold and reduce this bias.
- zeteo 14y ago
  I don't think it's inconsistent. Many, if not most places these days aim to hire people who look differently but think the same.
  - MartinCron 14y ago
    Diversity at it's shallowest?
- gruseom 14y ago
  It only looks like a contradiction because you omitted the part where he resolves it. Here's the whole quote: For an early stage, raw startup, your hiring focus should be on homogeneity. You should be encouraging a diversity of origins (gender, ethnicity, etc.) while discouraging a diversity in company values. In other words: diversity of personal origins is good, divergence of company values is bad. I wonder if you misunderstood what he means by "culture". He doesn't mean the cultural background of each individual; he means the shared values of the team they're joining. His argument is that having teammates who share the same values about the work is so important that it should never be compromised, at least in the early stage of an endeavor. I agree with that. There's an objection to be made that company values can't actually be separated from personal origins, because people with different backgrounds are likely to want to handle the work differently.
pnathan 14y ago
Hire inexperienced people? That is a recipe for making old mistakes experienced people would know to avoid. It's also totally crass to hire newbies because they will put in overtime. If you want to build a culture, build a culture people want to buy into, even old hands.
pacaro 14y ago
I understand the point, but there is a challenge that has to be met, particularly if you are trying to build a consumer product. It is very easy to fall into the "Inmates are Running the Asylum"[1] trap, the product looks good within the team and to like minded customers but is missing something (or everything) for the broader customer base. This lead an entire industry to spend decades building products that only techies could love... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp/0672326140 http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp...
sweettea 14y ago
I recently got a job without the beer test, and I'm glad. I understand the need to fit in, and I genuinely think I do, but I, like many others, don't deal well socializing with enormous groups of strange people. If subjected to a beer test, it'll be super-painful for me, and I'll be ordinately quiet --- because what social situation wants an outsider to dominate the conversation? But going out for beer with one or two people, or having a conversation with one or two people in the office in a traditional interview setting, is a much more natural social situation and I believe shows much better how I'll get along with the company.
troebr 14y ago
hire inexperienced people because they will put in overtime and will be more willing to accept your culture -> hire inexperienced people because they are more easily influenced. I don't think I would be a culture fit in the company of someone who thinks like that. A job should be beneficial to both the employee and the employer, and more experienced hires would be able to point out dysfunctions instead of blindly accepting anything (see the monkeys and the ladder experiment - whether it is true or not, it illustrates the point).
genericresponse 14y ago
This article sounds distinctly like a list of excuses for why your company isn't equal opportunity. A huge list of rationalizations about why you chose the white, young, middle to upper-middle class, guy over other candidates.
motters 14y ago
Cohesive, insular cultures are more likely to suffer from group-think and to tolerate bad behavior. This article seems like bad advice because when everyone thinks alike it's more difficult to spot and correct mistakes.
jayferd 14y ago
<quote> [Inexperienced people] Work long hours. Inexperienced people make up for inexperience with enthusiasm, and often don't have much of a life. This does not necessarily make them more productive then experienced people, but the enthusiasm and energy is often infectious and helps shape the company culture. </quote> If I'm reading this right, this is awful. Just awful. You want to hire inexperienced people to "infect" the culture with a habit of working long hours. I have a seriously bad reaction to this because I was that guy. I came into a company, was super excited to work there, worked long hours like everyone else, and all of a sudden I had no life outside of work. I don't plan to do that again.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  "Never, Ever Compromise on culture fit" works both ways. When I'm looking to join an organization, I see if exploitative crazy long hours are part of the company culture. If they are, we aren't a fit. I've moved so far past thinking that long hours are a good thing that arguments for that kind of culture feel like arguments for the geocentric solar system. It would be cute if it weren't so sad.
- rachelbythebay 14y ago
  Knowing about this and deliberately exploiting it sounds mighty evil. Let's see. First, you create a famously high bar for hiring. Make it seem like it was a miracle anyone gets in. That way, once you're inside, you think you got a hold of something extremely valuable and you're not likely to let it go. Sunk cost fallacy and all that. Next, go heavy on young people with no professional experience. They have neither the work experience nor the sheer number of years walking the planet to know when someone is taking advantage of them. They will be rather useful to you until they finally realize what's going on. When they start waking up, sour their milk and "manage them out". Optimizing for people without families further ensures heightened commitment to the company. Repeat every year with a fresh batch of graduates. Profit!
- jzwinck 14y ago
  Right, and "draw out the best in people (e.g. engineers at Palintir sleeping under their desks in their belief they are helping national security)." You have got to be kidding. Palantir is not even a small company now, and I don't know how outdated this sleeping under desks lore is, but when young hires where I worked slept under their desks, they were told to knock it off.
tewolde 14y ago
No! No. No. Find what you need, and hire for talent...all else is smoke and noise!
KevinMS 14y ago
This is satire, right?
- ucee054 14y ago
  Some people actually buy into this kind of nonsense. Example: http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/11/28/kpmg.mp3 http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/11/28/kpmg.mp3
Torgo 14y ago
Will I fail the post-beer test if I don't care for drinking culture? What if I'm a Muslim, Mormon, or just a teetotaller? Why do these places seem to have the same beer-culture? I think this is a new thing? I didn't see it so prevalent ten years ago, now it seems like every conference, every workplace enjoys imbibing tons and tons of beer.
freework 14y ago
I think the problem is that with Silicon Valley startups, failure is the norm. Instead of optimizing for maximum skill when hiring, they optimize for maximum "bro-ness". You take that 7 figure investor money, get yourself a swanky downtown San Francisco office, and spend the days drinking beer with your "startup bros" until the money runs out. Then you write your "why my startup failed" postmortem blog post, then start the process all over again.
ucee054 14y ago
Early on, you want to hire people with common perspectives and goals who are all pulling in the same direction. (Note: this does not mean want you want clones or group think). That's EXACTLY what it means. Someone following these ideas will end up hiring sheep. What a stupid article.

31 points by yarianluis 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

But where is the evidence that creating a homogeneous, groupthink (I know the article said no groupthink, but come on) culture is actually better?

alanctgardner2 14y ago

I think "culture fit" makes this sound more specific than it is: it's mostly about interpersonal relationships within the team, and enthusiasm for the problem domain. For some reason the west-coast startup cargo cult seems to think that every company needs to be a unique and beautiful snowflake which offers niche perks and only hires (for example) ginger rock-climbers with astigmatism who like Devo. The fact of the matter is, half of this article is about the new employee getting along with your team. This doesn't necessarily require common interests, it's just about having similar communication styles, and to an extent values. The beer test is an excellent way to establish this. The other half is about hiring enthusiastic recruits, especially the 'green and keen' fresh out of college, who are willing to sacrifice their lives to ship. I personally don't agree with sleeping under your desk every night, or living in a perpetual crunch, but I'm lucky enough to have an interesting, challenging job where I want to work on related projects at home. If an employee is interested in the problem they're solving, they'll be more productive, regardless of whether they spend 8 hours or 12 hours at the office. In short, I like all of the content in the article, but 'culture fit' makes it seem like a mystical x factor, when it's really common sense.

luser001 14y ago

This whole article should have been prefaced with a giant 72-pt IMHO and suffixed with a 72-pt YMMV. I was amazed at recommendations #4 and #5: reward somebody for "fitting in" etc. (!!!!!!!) I highly recommend Andy Grove's "High Output Management" if you're really interested in building a high-performance organization. It's a highly objective book: don't waste time on voodoo like "Intriguingly, in a "social" environment, the candidate would often show more of their "true colors". Especially if beer was involved."

SkyMarshal 14y ago
Good recommendation, ordered. Recently this obsession with 'culture' among startups has been sounding more and more cargo-cultish. Grove is the real deal though.
- jisaacstone 14y ago
  Ha! that is true. In my experience 'culture' means 'drinks microbrews and knows _all the memes_ '
  - snogglethorpe 14y ago
    Also, hipster glasses and at least one antique leather armchair in which you regularly sip your obscure single-malts.... [I totally love github as a service, their employees seem genuinely cool, and they apprently know what they're doing, but the pictures they post for every new hire are absolutely hilarious ... I think I could never work there because I just don't have all the necessary accessories...]

guylhem 14y ago

This is weird to read. What caught my eye: "For an early stage, raw startup, your hiring focus should be on homogeneity." then right away: "You should be encouraging a diversity of origins (gender, ethnicity, etc.)" I don't really care about one side of the argument or another, (homogeneity, heterogeneity) or even prejudices - but this seems inconsistent. If you are advocating cultural homogeneity, except for political correctness or legal reasons (ie to avoid being sued by applicant you rejected because of their gender or ethnicity), why do you argue for diverse origins ? Be consistent with yourself - it's A or B. If it's A and B you may not really have an argument. And I would really, really like to see facts supporting either homogeneity or heterogeneity. So far all I've seen are best described as case reports - no real trials with enough samples to have a good statistical power. Make teams of 100 persons, standardize on competence (SAT, whatever) then try and compare different mix of gender or ethnicities and pick up the top performing mixes. Do that multiple times. Then give a conclusion. That's an argument I will be able to believe. EDIT: some clarification - I don't care what anyone thinks/look like/believes as long as the person can deliver more than it costs, but I'm willing to consider that if conclusive evidence exists. The best I've read so far is a positive effect of homogeneity towards cooperation against others (parochialism). EDIT2: to avoid statistical backslash, I realize that due to higher standard deviation in small samples of a given population, underrepresented genders or ethnicities may show a higher variance - hence the need to standardize beforehand on competence to select test subjects over a threshold and reduce this bias.

zeteo 14y ago
I don't think it's inconsistent. Many, if not most places these days aim to hire people who look differently but think the same.
- MartinCron 14y ago
  Diversity at it's shallowest?
gruseom 14y ago
It only looks like a contradiction because you omitted the part where he resolves it. Here's the whole quote: For an early stage, raw startup, your hiring focus should be on homogeneity. You should be encouraging a diversity of origins (gender, ethnicity, etc.) while discouraging a diversity in company values. In other words: diversity of personal origins is good, divergence of company values is bad. I wonder if you misunderstood what he means by "culture". He doesn't mean the cultural background of each individual; he means the shared values of the team they're joining. His argument is that having teammates who share the same values about the work is so important that it should never be compromised, at least in the early stage of an endeavor. I agree with that. There's an objection to be made that company values can't actually be separated from personal origins, because people with different backgrounds are likely to want to handle the work differently.

pnathan 14y ago

Hire inexperienced people? That is a recipe for making old mistakes experienced people would know to avoid. It's also totally crass to hire newbies because they will put in overtime. If you want to build a culture, build a culture people want to buy into, even old hands.

pacaro 14y ago

I understand the point, but there is a challenge that has to be met, particularly if you are trying to build a consumer product. It is very easy to fall into the "Inmates are Running the Asylum"[1] trap, the product looks good within the team and to like minded customers but is missing something (or everything) for the broader customer base. This lead an entire industry to spend decades building products that only techies could love... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp/0672326140 http://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp...

sweettea 14y ago

I recently got a job without the beer test, and I'm glad. I understand the need to fit in, and I genuinely think I do, but I, like many others, don't deal well socializing with enormous groups of strange people. If subjected to a beer test, it'll be super-painful for me, and I'll be ordinately quiet --- because what social situation wants an outsider to dominate the conversation? But going out for beer with one or two people, or having a conversation with one or two people in the office in a traditional interview setting, is a much more natural social situation and I believe shows much better how I'll get along with the company.

troebr 14y ago

hire inexperienced people because they will put in overtime and will be more willing to accept your culture -> hire inexperienced people because they are more easily influenced. I don't think I would be a culture fit in the company of someone who thinks like that. A job should be beneficial to both the employee and the employer, and more experienced hires would be able to point out dysfunctions instead of blindly accepting anything (see the monkeys and the ladder experiment - whether it is true or not, it illustrates the point).

genericresponse 14y ago

This article sounds distinctly like a list of excuses for why your company isn't equal opportunity. A huge list of rationalizations about why you chose the white, young, middle to upper-middle class, guy over other candidates.

motters 14y ago

Cohesive, insular cultures are more likely to suffer from group-think and to tolerate bad behavior. This article seems like bad advice because when everyone thinks alike it's more difficult to spot and correct mistakes.

jayferd 14y ago

<quote> [Inexperienced people] Work long hours. Inexperienced people make up for inexperience with enthusiasm, and often don't have much of a life. This does not necessarily make them more productive then experienced people, but the enthusiasm and energy is often infectious and helps shape the company culture. </quote> If I'm reading this right, this is awful. Just awful. You want to hire inexperienced people to "infect" the culture with a habit of working long hours. I have a seriously bad reaction to this because I was that guy. I came into a company, was super excited to work there, worked long hours like everyone else, and all of a sudden I had no life outside of work. I don't plan to do that again.

MartinCron 14y ago
"Never, Ever Compromise on culture fit" works both ways. When I'm looking to join an organization, I see if exploitative crazy long hours are part of the company culture. If they are, we aren't a fit. I've moved so far past thinking that long hours are a good thing that arguments for that kind of culture feel like arguments for the geocentric solar system. It would be cute if it weren't so sad.
rachelbythebay 14y ago
Knowing about this and deliberately exploiting it sounds mighty evil. Let's see. First, you create a famously high bar for hiring. Make it seem like it was a miracle anyone gets in. That way, once you're inside, you think you got a hold of something extremely valuable and you're not likely to let it go. Sunk cost fallacy and all that. Next, go heavy on young people with no professional experience. They have neither the work experience nor the sheer number of years walking the planet to know when someone is taking advantage of them. They will be rather useful to you until they finally realize what's going on. When they start waking up, sour their milk and "manage them out". Optimizing for people without families further ensures heightened commitment to the company. Repeat every year with a fresh batch of graduates. Profit!
jzwinck 14y ago
Right, and "draw out the best in people (e.g. engineers at Palintir sleeping under their desks in their belief they are helping national security)." You have got to be kidding. Palantir is not even a small company now, and I don't know how outdated this sleeping under desks lore is, but when young hires where I worked slept under their desks, they were told to knock it off.

tewolde 14y ago

No! No. No. Find what you need, and hire for talent...all else is smoke and noise!

KevinMS 14y ago

This is satire, right?

ucee054 14y ago
Some people actually buy into this kind of nonsense. Example: http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/11/28/kpmg.mp3 http://regmedia.co.uk/2005/11/28/kpmg.mp3

Torgo 14y ago

Will I fail the post-beer test if I don't care for drinking culture? What if I'm a Muslim, Mormon, or just a teetotaller? Why do these places seem to have the same beer-culture? I think this is a new thing? I didn't see it so prevalent ten years ago, now it seems like every conference, every workplace enjoys imbibing tons and tons of beer.

freework 14y ago

I think the problem is that with Silicon Valley startups, failure is the norm. Instead of optimizing for maximum skill when hiring, they optimize for maximum "bro-ness". You take that 7 figure investor money, get yourself a swanky downtown San Francisco office, and spend the days drinking beer with your "startup bros" until the money runs out. Then you write your "why my startup failed" postmortem blog post, then start the process all over again.

ucee054 14y ago

Early on, you want to hire people with common perspectives and goals who are all pulling in the same direction. (Note: this does not mean want you want clones or group think). That's EXACTLY what it means. Someone following these ideas will end up hiring sheep. What a stupid article.