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Cultural fit tends to be code for the firee (or firer, one or the other) being an asshole. Nobody wants to work with assholes, no matter how above average they

Cultural fit tends to be code for the firee (or firer, one or the other) being an asshole. Nobody wants to work with assholes, no matter how above average they might be. I have never heard of a kind, well-liked person being fired for cultural fit issues. (Which is not to say it never happens. But it's pretty rare, I guess, that that is the actual reason a nice person is fired.)

ahk 13y ago
It can also nicely hide ageism, racism, sexism, conservatism, liberalism etc. Basically any reason to not like a person.
- ansgri 13y ago
  Whatever the people think of these -isms being bad, I am convinced that a person has a sort of right to not having to deal with people he doesn't like.
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Not in the us, not as an employee of a corporation. If you don't like someone because they are in a protected class, you just have to deal with it.
j_baker 13y ago
So then why don't you just fire them for being difficult to get along with? Why do we need codes that allow us to hide our true motivations? That's incredibly passive-aggressive.
neilk 13y ago
In my experience almost any level of assholery is tolerated if the person is a good performer, or has made themselves indispensable. "Cultural fit", when it isn't an excuse for various kinds of discrimination, seems to be more of an issue with stuff that's not so easy to quantify. If there's a guy who likes going off on long expeditions into learning new tools, and the rest of the team are PHP meat-and-potatoes guys. Or if you have a place where cultish worship of the CEO is the norm, and one person don't exhibit any outward signs. And the definition of "asshole" behavior can even vary. In one job I worked at, replacing someone's code with your own that works better made you a hero, and it was incumbent on the other person to have no ego about it. In another job, that was tantamount to insubordination, and not respecting the blood, sweat and tears that had been spent before you got there. (Full disclosure: I did the former behavior at the latter place. It wasn't the only reason things didn't work out, but it was a factor.)

ahk 13y ago

It can also nicely hide ageism, racism, sexism, conservatism, liberalism etc. Basically any reason to not like a person.

ansgri 13y ago
Whatever the people think of these -isms being bad, I am convinced that a person has a sort of right to not having to deal with people he doesn't like.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Not in the us, not as an employee of a corporation. If you don't like someone because they are in a protected class, you just have to deal with it.

j_baker 13y ago

So then why don't you just fire them for being difficult to get along with? Why do we need codes that allow us to hide our true motivations? That's incredibly passive-aggressive.

neilk 13y ago

In my experience almost any level of assholery is tolerated if the person is a good performer, or has made themselves indispensable. "Cultural fit", when it isn't an excuse for various kinds of discrimination, seems to be more of an issue with stuff that's not so easy to quantify. If there's a guy who likes going off on long expeditions into learning new tools, and the rest of the team are PHP meat-and-potatoes guys. Or if you have a place where cultish worship of the CEO is the norm, and one person don't exhibit any outward signs. And the definition of "asshole" behavior can even vary. In one job I worked at, replacing someone's code with your own that works better made you a hero, and it was incumbent on the other person to have no ego about it. In another job, that was tantamount to insubordination, and not respecting the blood, sweat and tears that had been spent before you got there. (Full disclosure: I did the former behavior at the latter place. It wasn't the only reason things didn't work out, but it was a factor.)