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I've gotten the "you're not a cultural fit" email dozens of times. I think its a function of the economy. If employers are turning away perfectly competent engi

I've gotten the "you're not a cultural fit" email dozens of times. I think its a function of the economy. If employers are turning away perfectly competent engineers because of something as silly as a "Sunday test", you know there is a huge surplus to talented Engineers in the talent pool.

T-hawk 14y ago
There's a huge gap between "perfectly competent" at coding some crud screens and the sort of driven visionary that will build something on the scale of Stripe or Dropbox or Airbnb or id Tech or whatever. There's a mild surplus of the former and a drastic shortage of the latter. You don't worry about cultural fit for a true spectacular outlier talent, the culture will develop around him instead. You do for a perfectly competent average engineer because he can always be replaced with another.
- freework 14y ago
  Most companies don't want a "driven visionary", because they see themselves (the founders) as filling that role. Most companies just want someone obedient and willing to do someone else's grunt work.
encoderer 14y ago
You think? Evidence (and my own personal experience) suggests that it is a supremely tight market for good engineering talent. I think calling likability and cultural-fit "silly" puts you in a minority opinion amongst hiring managers. And I'm curious how many interviews you must have been on to have gotten "dozens" of "cultural fit" denials? Are you just out of school?
- freework 14y ago
  No, I've bult dozens of projects by myself. Remember the Hacker News Karma Tracker that was made the front page a few weeks back? That was me. I wrote that in 2 weeks. I've also built a web framework, and a dozen python libraries. Trust me what I say that the majority of companies out there don't give a shit about programmer competency. They'd, on average, rather hire a clueless "cool bro" over someone like myself who knows how to get stuff done and has a track record of getting things done.
  - encoderer 14y ago
    Knowing that you're not just out of school, your earlier comment makes me want to ask "what's wrong then?" I have about a dozen years experience as a "professional" software engineer. My experience, on both sides of the table, is that good engineering talent really is hard to find, and that those who posses it don't usually have trouble finding a job. Here in the bay area that's been especially true: I've never had just one job offer at a time. I've been "looking" here twice in the last 5 years and both times I had a dozen recruiters calling me, a half dozen phone screens, a handful of interviews and at least 2 offers. And along the way as much of the culling was done by me as it was by the prospective companies. Look, I know I'm just talking in anecdotes. And I'm parsing a lot because I don't want to offend you. But if you have "dozens" or even just a lot of people telling you they can't hire you because you're not a good fit, that should be a red flag to you. Sure, some of the problem is probably some of the companies. But you could probably see results by taking ownership of part of the problem for yourself. What I mean is, it's easy for an engineer to just try to wash his hands of things like "networking" and "cultural fits" but a better way is to just treat it like any other engineering problem and optimize for it.
    - freework 14y ago
      You don't have to worry about offending me. I'm the biggest asshole the universe has ever seen. I assure you that I can take more than what I regularly dish out. My problems are two fold. First, I'm located in Ohio. If I were in NYC or San Francisco, it would be a different story. Secondly, I am very confident in my abilities, and I have a lot of integrity. "B player boses" are scared of people like me. My biggest problem is that I'm not really capable of working at a company as an employee. I need to be either a CTO level person, or as part of a team where there is no "boss". A lot of companies claim that they are a true "collaborative environment", but rarely do companies ever actually operate this way. My first engineering job was on a team where there was no boss. Everyone was equal in terms of influence over the direction of the technology. I was a perfect fit there. I contributed more than anyone else at that job. I think it boils down to the face that I care more about software than I do about the company. I care more about the quality of the software than I do about my boss's feelings. I care more about the software than I do about my own well being. I guess I could start caring less. I could just spend all day small talking with co-workers and generally not giving a shit like everyone else...

T-hawk 14y ago

There's a huge gap between "perfectly competent" at coding some crud screens and the sort of driven visionary that will build something on the scale of Stripe or Dropbox or Airbnb or id Tech or whatever. There's a mild surplus of the former and a drastic shortage of the latter. You don't worry about cultural fit for a true spectacular outlier talent, the culture will develop around him instead. You do for a perfectly competent average engineer because he can always be replaced with another.

freework 14y ago
Most companies don't want a "driven visionary", because they see themselves (the founders) as filling that role. Most companies just want someone obedient and willing to do someone else's grunt work.

encoderer 14y ago

You think? Evidence (and my own personal experience) suggests that it is a supremely tight market for good engineering talent. I think calling likability and cultural-fit "silly" puts you in a minority opinion amongst hiring managers. And I'm curious how many interviews you must have been on to have gotten "dozens" of "cultural fit" denials? Are you just out of school?

freework 14y ago
No, I've bult dozens of projects by myself. Remember the Hacker News Karma Tracker that was made the front page a few weeks back? That was me. I wrote that in 2 weeks. I've also built a web framework, and a dozen python libraries. Trust me what I say that the majority of companies out there don't give a shit about programmer competency. They'd, on average, rather hire a clueless "cool bro" over someone like myself who knows how to get stuff done and has a track record of getting things done.
- encoderer 14y ago
  Knowing that you're not just out of school, your earlier comment makes me want to ask "what's wrong then?" I have about a dozen years experience as a "professional" software engineer. My experience, on both sides of the table, is that good engineering talent really is hard to find, and that those who posses it don't usually have trouble finding a job. Here in the bay area that's been especially true: I've never had just one job offer at a time. I've been "looking" here twice in the last 5 years and both times I had a dozen recruiters calling me, a half dozen phone screens, a handful of interviews and at least 2 offers. And along the way as much of the culling was done by me as it was by the prospective companies. Look, I know I'm just talking in anecdotes. And I'm parsing a lot because I don't want to offend you. But if you have "dozens" or even just a lot of people telling you they can't hire you because you're not a good fit, that should be a red flag to you. Sure, some of the problem is probably some of the companies. But you could probably see results by taking ownership of part of the problem for yourself. What I mean is, it's easy for an engineer to just try to wash his hands of things like "networking" and "cultural fits" but a better way is to just treat it like any other engineering problem and optimize for it.
  - freework 14y ago
    You don't have to worry about offending me. I'm the biggest asshole the universe has ever seen. I assure you that I can take more than what I regularly dish out. My problems are two fold. First, I'm located in Ohio. If I were in NYC or San Francisco, it would be a different story. Secondly, I am very confident in my abilities, and I have a lot of integrity. "B player boses" are scared of people like me. My biggest problem is that I'm not really capable of working at a company as an employee. I need to be either a CTO level person, or as part of a team where there is no "boss". A lot of companies claim that they are a true "collaborative environment", but rarely do companies ever actually operate this way. My first engineering job was on a team where there was no boss. Everyone was equal in terms of influence over the direction of the technology. I was a perfect fit there. I contributed more than anyone else at that job. I think it boils down to the face that I care more about software than I do about the company. I care more about the quality of the software than I do about my boss's feelings. I care more about the software than I do about my own well being. I guess I could start caring less. I could just spend all day small talking with co-workers and generally not giving a shit like everyone else...