5 ms·

What exactly do you think culture is? Hiring for company culture could be as simple as having a no asshole rule or preferring people that can capably balance th

What exactly do you think culture is? Hiring for company culture could be as simple as having a no asshole rule or preferring people that can capably balance their home-work life rather than 10x until they burn out in a year and a half and quit.

EliRivers 11y ago
"Cultural fit" is code for "just like us". It's not code for "can do the job needed to a high standard". It's not code for "would work well with our current employees". If that's what is was, people wouldn't say "cultural fit". They wouldn't say they interviewed for "cultural fit". They'd be interviewing for professionalism and ability to do the job and ability to work well with other employees, and people who turned up to a job interview wouldn't get turned down because they wore a suit to the interview while the interviewer dressed like a slob in a retro-ironic t-shirt. It's code for "just like us". "Cultural fit" is important for workplaces which contain a number of people already who couldn't work with someone different; at that point, you look out over your homogenous banks of identikit employees, and wonder how vulnerable you've become because you all think the same, and how many excellent applicants you've turned down because they weren't just like us. If anything, you should hire for NOT cultural fit. You should hire for people who think differently, who will bring new ideas, new perspectives. Who will see the gaps in your current products because they're bringing a different perspective. Instead of hiring the same person over and over, duplicating existing ways of thinking and reinforcing the same mistakes, the same vulnerabilites, the same blind spots, hire people who can fill in those gaps and actually bring something new to the table and see those mistakes and those vulnerabilites.
- codingdave 11y ago
  Wow. I'm not even sure where to begin. Clearly, you do not understand what we are talking about when we say "cultural fit". People do work differently. They have their own communication styles, leadership styles, and working styles. Some of those styles work better together than others. That is is not a judgment call of saying any one style is better or worse, it is just saying that mixing incompatible styles can build a dysfunctional team. So knowing who you have on board, and how they work and communicate, lets you hire compatible styles. This has nothing to do with diversity of people. Very diverse people can still have compatible working styles.
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    Yet I see company after company after company filled with people who dress the same, act the same, think the same. I genuinely believe that you believe everything you say. That you think you're objective, and really very fair indeed, and that deep down, you believe you're probably actually more objective and more fair than average. But when I look around, I see company after company after company that hires people just like them. It's impossible to tell what someone's working style is from an interview. Impossible to tell even from one of those hip auditons that the kids like these days, asking someone to take a day's holiday and waste their time in a potential employers office. It's impossible. So people tell themselves "cultural fit", just like you do, and they hire someone who looks like them, dresses like them, thinks like them. That person almost certainly does have a compatible working style, because that person is the same as the other employees, so now you can pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you had some good intuition there about working styles, and that applicant with the accent who has a very different background probably never would have worked out. You're right, it's nothing to do with diversity. That's just something that doesn't happen when you hire for "cultural fit". Don't waste your time reasoning with me, I have you on the one hand, and on the other hand company after company after company of homogenised employees. Who am I going to believe? You, or the evidence?
    - mattbee 11y ago
      We explicitly washed our hands of "cultural fit" on our careers site, which took a bit of persuasion on our board - https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/process https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/process We need 1) skilled people who can 2) learn and 3) work in a team. That's it, and that's one of several reasons we're interviewing anonymously, through IM - no names or CVs.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Then provide us with a precise definition of "culture fit", and some notion of how you screen for it. Maybe none of us will disagree with it. Few of us have a problem with a "no asshole rule", for instance. Precision is important here, because it needs to be communicated to everyone who interviews, lest "culture fit" assume its inevitable role of "escape hatch for allowing interviewers who are having a bad day to neg anyone who doesn't jump out at them as someone they'd enjoy having a beer with".
- bjelkeman-again 11y ago
  We clearly have a very different interpretation of the expression "cultural fit". Not in anyway saying that my definition of it is correct. If you looked at the people we hire, then you would see it is not people just like me. Far from it.

EliRivers 11y ago

"Cultural fit" is code for "just like us". It's not code for "can do the job needed to a high standard". It's not code for "would work well with our current employees". If that's what is was, people wouldn't say "cultural fit". They wouldn't say they interviewed for "cultural fit". They'd be interviewing for professionalism and ability to do the job and ability to work well with other employees, and people who turned up to a job interview wouldn't get turned down because they wore a suit to the interview while the interviewer dressed like a slob in a retro-ironic t-shirt. It's code for "just like us". "Cultural fit" is important for workplaces which contain a number of people already who couldn't work with someone different; at that point, you look out over your homogenous banks of identikit employees, and wonder how vulnerable you've become because you all think the same, and how many excellent applicants you've turned down because they weren't just like us. If anything, you should hire for NOT cultural fit. You should hire for people who think differently, who will bring new ideas, new perspectives. Who will see the gaps in your current products because they're bringing a different perspective. Instead of hiring the same person over and over, duplicating existing ways of thinking and reinforcing the same mistakes, the same vulnerabilites, the same blind spots, hire people who can fill in those gaps and actually bring something new to the table and see those mistakes and those vulnerabilites.

codingdave 11y ago
Wow. I'm not even sure where to begin. Clearly, you do not understand what we are talking about when we say "cultural fit". People do work differently. They have their own communication styles, leadership styles, and working styles. Some of those styles work better together than others. That is is not a judgment call of saying any one style is better or worse, it is just saying that mixing incompatible styles can build a dysfunctional team. So knowing who you have on board, and how they work and communicate, lets you hire compatible styles. This has nothing to do with diversity of people. Very diverse people can still have compatible working styles.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Yet I see company after company after company filled with people who dress the same, act the same, think the same. I genuinely believe that you believe everything you say. That you think you're objective, and really very fair indeed, and that deep down, you believe you're probably actually more objective and more fair than average. But when I look around, I see company after company after company that hires people just like them. It's impossible to tell what someone's working style is from an interview. Impossible to tell even from one of those hip auditons that the kids like these days, asking someone to take a day's holiday and waste their time in a potential employers office. It's impossible. So people tell themselves "cultural fit", just like you do, and they hire someone who looks like them, dresses like them, thinks like them. That person almost certainly does have a compatible working style, because that person is the same as the other employees, so now you can pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you had some good intuition there about working styles, and that applicant with the accent who has a very different background probably never would have worked out. You're right, it's nothing to do with diversity. That's just something that doesn't happen when you hire for "cultural fit". Don't waste your time reasoning with me, I have you on the one hand, and on the other hand company after company after company of homogenised employees. Who am I going to believe? You, or the evidence?
  - mattbee 11y ago
    We explicitly washed our hands of "cultural fit" on our careers site, which took a bit of persuasion on our board - https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/process https://careers.bytemark.co.uk/process We need 1) skilled people who can 2) learn and 3) work in a team. That's it, and that's one of several reasons we're interviewing anonymously, through IM - no names or CVs.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Then provide us with a precise definition of "culture fit", and some notion of how you screen for it. Maybe none of us will disagree with it. Few of us have a problem with a "no asshole rule", for instance. Precision is important here, because it needs to be communicated to everyone who interviews, lest "culture fit" assume its inevitable role of "escape hatch for allowing interviewers who are having a bad day to neg anyone who doesn't jump out at them as someone they'd enjoy having a beer with".
bjelkeman-again 11y ago
We clearly have a very different interpretation of the expression "cultural fit". Not in anyway saying that my definition of it is correct. If you looked at the people we hire, then you would see it is not people just like me. Far from it.