8 ms·

Technical Hiring and Cultural Fit

21 points by GarethX 11y ago

buckbova 11y ago
> When I wanted to hire women, I looked for women. I have been very successful in hiring a diverse team. This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. > Once you’ve learned one or two computer languages, you can learn any computer language. It helps but going from one disparate stack to another can be troublesome for many I've worked with. Almost a complete non-starter, ie going from .NET + sql server to python + django + web services or from Java + hibernate to nodejs + angularjs.
- paulcole 11y ago
  > This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. Diversity in a team can be a feature that is valuable in and of itself. Different backgrounds, ways of thinking, approaches to problems, life experiences, etc.
- mooreds 11y ago
  It really depends on your timeframe, skill needs, and how desperate you are. Some jobs absolutely require you to be productive on day 1, while others are less stringent. In the latter case, hiring for experience and not just immediate skillset makes sense.
- outworlder 11y ago
  Almost everything boils down to time. What I've found difficult to work with is people that think that anything they do has "magical" properties. I.E., they don't actually understand at least one abstraction level. That also boils down to time(and willingness, and a proper mentor). But it is a different order of magnitude, depending on what is missing. Learning new programming languages is easy (except Haskell, attempt no landing there) and is also a matter of time. Learning the ecosystem that goes with it takes longer (again, time). Learning how to code idiomatically requires experience (time once more, but only if actively programming).
  - liquidcool 11y ago
    Yes, it's like the Niels Bohr quote, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." You have to determine if you need someone who is an expert now, or can become an expert. If you have a bunch of experts already, you can relax the requirement for new people because of knowledge transfer. (Assuming you're good about that.) But we must acknowledge the amount of time that people spend in jobs now. If it takes a year to gain mastery and people leave after 2, like you said, there's just not enough time for people to learn from scratch.
- Udo 11y ago
  > This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. There is something to be said for trying to prevent (or break up) a monoculture. Monocultural companies are slow and rigid, and ultimately liable to lose perspective.
- ffn 11y ago
  I usually believe emphasis on diversity is a bunch of PC shit that distracts from the core tenants of building a good business (i.e. shipping a product, having ethics, making sustainable profit, etc.), but you really should hire women. That is, you should have a balance of sexes on the team (so I guess hire men if you're in a predominately women field). This is because we're human and one of the most engaging things we can do is interact with the opposite sex. Rather than having to spend money on extremely bs team-building exercises to get your employees to not hate coming to work, just hire a team of balanced sexes. A bit of flirting, imagined sexual tension, and does-she-like-me-what-do-i-feel-about-him goes a long way to creating an atmosphere where employees don't burn out. (Just make sure to hire non-toxic people and avoid the all-guys-are-rapists / all-girls-are-sluts ideological extremists)
  - akilism 11y ago
    What did I just read...
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      It sounds like you just read someone who said relationship drama between teammates is good for team building. I personally would expect it to have the opposite effect most of the time.
      - akilism 11y ago
        Right. "Hire more women for the sexual tension." The tech sector has a long way to go.
    - mattdeboard 11y ago
      It has to be satire. It HAS to be.
- dasil003 11y ago
  > This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. This is the entire debate of affirmative action, and people come down on both sides for valid and unquantifiable reasons. Another way to think about it is to recognize that you have an unconscious bias for people that look and think like you do. A big problem with tech geeks is that see themselves as being unbiased and objective in all things (eg. meritocracy, best argument wins, etc), and so ironically they are more susceptible to rationalizing their own biases. So acknowledge you're not omniscient, recognize the bias, and consciously counteract it by giving people who are different for whatever the benefit of the doubt. I have often profited dramatically from hearing someone out who at first seemed to hold crazy untenable ideas.
  - buckbova 11y ago
    My department has had native born from all over the globe, north and south america, latin america, asia, europe, and africa with a third women. Probably being in a biotech has an impact on diversity. I've had a hand in hiring some of the above. I do acknowledge I have a bias towards those who can express themselves well in english but accents are welcome.
chollida1 11y ago
We've done away with "Cultural fit" interviews at our company as we found they didn't actually do anything for us, maybe we just did them wrong? Has anyone actually found a use for cultural fit? I mean its not like they help weed out jerks. If someone is a jerk they'll either be a jerk in all interviews or be on their best behavior until they're hired. What should we be looking for in a cultural fit interview that isn't just "looks like us, works like us plays like us"?
- shaftoe 11y ago
  I use culture fit as a reverse filter. We show the candidate a pretty open view of what working for us is like and let them decide if they're excited or turned off.
  - jaawn 11y ago
    I think this is by far the best approach. If I were treated this way during an interview process, I would have a great deal more respect for the organization and manager.
  - jrs235 11y ago
    In the past we have taken current developers and a potential hire out for lunch to see if there is "cultural fit". I don't like this idea anymore unless, we have agreed and intend to hire the candidate pending the lunch. However, the existing developers will not be able to override the hiring decision as it is not for them to say "no" but rather it is an opportunity for the candidate to decide if they can get along with the existing team. Is that fair?
- fecak 11y ago
  "works like us" is certainly much more reasonable (and safer legally) than "looks like us" or "plays like us". It's companies that hire based on the looks like/plays like that give "cultural fit" a bad name (ageism, discrimination, sexism, etc.). When talking about software, I'd refer to a company's development culture. What does the team value in engineers? What are attitudes towards things like testing, shipping code, etc.?
- 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
geggam 11y ago
Wonder how many glitches we see today are because everyone gets along and doesn't know how to fix the issues. Sometimes disagreeable people are like that because we are tired of the stupid. ( hypothetically of course )
- akilism 11y ago
  What? What does getting along with your coworkers have to do with fixing anything? Are disagreeable people better at fixing glitches?
  - brobdingnagian 11y ago
    He's talking about groupthink.
    - geggam 11y ago
      Which is what happens when you get a common culture and hire only those who fit in it.
cristianpascu 11y ago
I'm not from US, but I wonder, in the context of the current cultural shift and war on gay marriage, how are software companies looking at personal opinions on cultural matters like this one? Will that guy in the corner, who politely holds his views on a sensitive matter like gay marriage, make everyone else uncomfortable and, eventually, he'll have to leave?
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  This happened at Mozilla.
  - jaawn 11y ago
    That was the CEO though. Leaders will always (and should always) be treated differently than employees when it comes to personal views. Leaders often become de facto company spokespersons, and being outspoken against a lifestyle that your subordinates may engage in can have a lot of negative impacts at work, if your opinion is not clearly the majority opinion. This is especially true of the CEO—the 'face' of the company and main decision-maker. So, I don't think what happened at Mozilla is a good example of the whole "guy in the corner" thing.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      I've never been to Mozilla, so I have no idea what actually goes on in there.
      - jaawn 11y ago
        We're referring to this: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/03/us-mozilla-ceo-resignation-idUSBREA321Y320140403 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/03/us-mozilla-ceo-res...
        jsprogrammer 11y ago
        I know, but I'm not sure CEO is a standard unit. Was/is Brenden Eich a "guy in the corner"? I have no idea because I've never worked with him. Does the CEO of Mozilla perform any type of leadership role? I also don't know, as I've never worked there or been there while others were working.
itgoon 11y ago
How do you know that the culture you're hiring for is all that great for getting results? Is this culture the one you're going to need in the future? What if you have a need, and there's nobody that fits your culture? If you're understaffed, is it really better to keep asking your staff to work extra while you satisfy the culture requirement, even if it's just while someone ramps up? Lastly, "culture" seems to be another way of saying "we don't really know what works, so we just look for people we personally like". I've worked with many people I didn't like, or even got along with (I'm sure others could say the same of me). Focusing on tasks and goals, communicating regularly, and having decent work habits went very far.
b6 11y ago
When we say we want diversity, I think we tend to mean we want diversity of perspective and experience and way of thinking. But when we try to implement diversity, we tend to do it by body shapes and colors and genders. > I think the biggest thing is to acknowledge that we are all human and we like people ... This sentence was off to such a good start!
brobdingnagian 11y ago
We need to work together to make culture-fit a bad word. "Culture fit" means discrimination along dimensions that shall not be named, for were they to be named they would be illegal.
- metamet 11y ago
  What are your thoughts on hiring someone you want to work with vs hiring someone you don't want to work with?
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Should depend on why you want to work with them. You want to work with them because they are competent and results-oriented? Good. You want to work with them because they are eager and capable? Good. You want to work with them because they look kind of like you and like the same beers you do? Nope.
  - brobdingnagian 11y ago
    Let's just unravel what it means to not want to work with someone: you are chipping away at them as a person who is trying to survive. You are an agent of natural selection in action. If that's part of your identity, I think you're a jerk. If it's not, then hire them and offer to help them out. Don't try to change them too much - just bring them back within the normal range. Offer them CBT or just be nice to them. At the very very least, if you're not hiring someone because you don't think you can work with them, tell them, and suggest they get some counseling.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    What happens when you want to work with is indirectly based on a protected class (for example, it isn't that you want to work with a man, but you want to work with someone who fits a list of qualifications that excludes most women but very few men)?
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  It would be simple if this was always true. But you can have cultural differences along lines that are legal to discriminate upon (and I don't mean technically legal like sexual orientation, but along lines that most would agree was a good reason to not hire). But being that there are legitimate reasons to not hire someone that can be abstractly classified (like with 'cultural fit') and since there is an incentive for the employer to do such (giving a detailed explanation of why someone wasn't hired just isn't in the employer's best interest), there is going to be a smoke screen by which employer's practicing illegal discrimination will be able to hide behind. Short of always requiring a detailed reason why a candidate was passed over, there will always be the possibility to fudge an illegal act of discrimination to look like a legal one (and even a detailed explanation requirement wouldn't fully fix the problem).
yanilkr 11y ago
Jerks and culture misfits need jobs too. If you deny them, one day we might all end up working for them. Misfits and jerks found the industry. Myers Briggs personality test, which was a standard practice once is now irrelevant in the tech industry and its a good thing. Those personality tests would disqualify many good tech professions. It has been hard for me to have any strong opinions about hiring. Many people disproved all previous assumptions. Skills do matter, some people are much better than others. Some people are good to talk to and are comforting to be around but they don't get the job done. They can use their soft skills to convince you why something was impossible to do. Problem solving skills, learning skills, risk taking behavior, passion for something, tenacity, optimism etc are also very important in judging a candidate for a technical role.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  > Jerks and culture misfits need jobs too. Why can't the jerks learn to get along with people? Why must we, collectively, bend over backwards to put up with their bullshit? Culture misfits, sure - some people just aren't super personable, but are still good at their job. But being a jerk is a choice, and one that not many people are willing to put up with.
  - cholantesh 11y ago
    >Why can't the jerks learn to get along with people? In some cases, wouldn't the answer be mental health issues (eg. autism)?

21 points by GarethX 11y ago

> When I wanted to hire women, I looked for women. I have been very successful in hiring a diverse team. This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. > Once you’ve learned one or two computer languages, you can learn any computer language. It helps but going from one disparate stack to another can be troublesome for many I've worked with. Almost a complete non-starter, ie going from .NET + sql server to python + django + web services or from Java + hibernate to nodejs + angularjs.

paulcole 11y ago
> This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. Diversity in a team can be a feature that is valuable in and of itself. Different backgrounds, ways of thinking, approaches to problems, life experiences, etc.
mooreds 11y ago
It really depends on your timeframe, skill needs, and how desperate you are. Some jobs absolutely require you to be productive on day 1, while others are less stringent. In the latter case, hiring for experience and not just immediate skillset makes sense.
outworlder 11y ago
Almost everything boils down to time. What I've found difficult to work with is people that think that anything they do has "magical" properties. I.E., they don't actually understand at least one abstraction level. That also boils down to time(and willingness, and a proper mentor). But it is a different order of magnitude, depending on what is missing. Learning new programming languages is easy (except Haskell, attempt no landing there) and is also a matter of time. Learning the ecosystem that goes with it takes longer (again, time). Learning how to code idiomatically requires experience (time once more, but only if actively programming).
- liquidcool 11y ago
  Yes, it's like the Niels Bohr quote, "An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field." You have to determine if you need someone who is an expert now, or can become an expert. If you have a bunch of experts already, you can relax the requirement for new people because of knowledge transfer. (Assuming you're good about that.) But we must acknowledge the amount of time that people spend in jobs now. If it takes a year to gain mastery and people leave after 2, like you said, there's just not enough time for people to learn from scratch.
Udo 11y ago
> This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. There is something to be said for trying to prevent (or break up) a monoculture. Monocultural companies are slow and rigid, and ultimately liable to lose perspective.
ffn 11y ago
I usually believe emphasis on diversity is a bunch of PC shit that distracts from the core tenants of building a good business (i.e. shipping a product, having ethics, making sustainable profit, etc.), but you really should hire women. That is, you should have a balance of sexes on the team (so I guess hire men if you're in a predominately women field). This is because we're human and one of the most engaging things we can do is interact with the opposite sex. Rather than having to spend money on extremely bs team-building exercises to get your employees to not hate coming to work, just hire a team of balanced sexes. A bit of flirting, imagined sexual tension, and does-she-like-me-what-do-i-feel-about-him goes a long way to creating an atmosphere where employees don't burn out. (Just make sure to hire non-toxic people and avoid the all-guys-are-rapists / all-girls-are-sluts ideological extremists)
- akilism 11y ago
  What did I just read...
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    It sounds like you just read someone who said relationship drama between teammates is good for team building. I personally would expect it to have the opposite effect most of the time.
    - akilism 11y ago
      Right. "Hire more women for the sexual tension." The tech sector has a long way to go.
  - mattdeboard 11y ago
    It has to be satire. It HAS to be.
dasil003 11y ago
> This never sits right with me. Diversity for the sake of diversity. This is the entire debate of affirmative action, and people come down on both sides for valid and unquantifiable reasons. Another way to think about it is to recognize that you have an unconscious bias for people that look and think like you do. A big problem with tech geeks is that see themselves as being unbiased and objective in all things (eg. meritocracy, best argument wins, etc), and so ironically they are more susceptible to rationalizing their own biases. So acknowledge you're not omniscient, recognize the bias, and consciously counteract it by giving people who are different for whatever the benefit of the doubt. I have often profited dramatically from hearing someone out who at first seemed to hold crazy untenable ideas.
- buckbova 11y ago
  My department has had native born from all over the globe, north and south america, latin america, asia, europe, and africa with a third women. Probably being in a biotech has an impact on diversity. I've had a hand in hiring some of the above. I do acknowledge I have a bias towards those who can express themselves well in english but accents are welcome.

chollida1 11y ago

We've done away with "Cultural fit" interviews at our company as we found they didn't actually do anything for us, maybe we just did them wrong? Has anyone actually found a use for cultural fit? I mean its not like they help weed out jerks. If someone is a jerk they'll either be a jerk in all interviews or be on their best behavior until they're hired. What should we be looking for in a cultural fit interview that isn't just "looks like us, works like us plays like us"?

shaftoe 11y ago
I use culture fit as a reverse filter. We show the candidate a pretty open view of what working for us is like and let them decide if they're excited or turned off.
- jaawn 11y ago
  I think this is by far the best approach. If I were treated this way during an interview process, I would have a great deal more respect for the organization and manager.
- jrs235 11y ago
  In the past we have taken current developers and a potential hire out for lunch to see if there is "cultural fit". I don't like this idea anymore unless, we have agreed and intend to hire the candidate pending the lunch. However, the existing developers will not be able to override the hiring decision as it is not for them to say "no" but rather it is an opportunity for the candidate to decide if they can get along with the existing team. Is that fair?
fecak 11y ago
"works like us" is certainly much more reasonable (and safer legally) than "looks like us" or "plays like us". It's companies that hire based on the looks like/plays like that give "cultural fit" a bad name (ageism, discrimination, sexism, etc.). When talking about software, I'd refer to a company's development culture. What does the team value in engineers? What are attitudes towards things like testing, shipping code, etc.?
11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

geggam 11y ago

Wonder how many glitches we see today are because everyone gets along and doesn't know how to fix the issues. Sometimes disagreeable people are like that because we are tired of the stupid. ( hypothetically of course )

akilism 11y ago
What? What does getting along with your coworkers have to do with fixing anything? Are disagreeable people better at fixing glitches?
- brobdingnagian 11y ago
  He's talking about groupthink.
  - geggam 11y ago
    Which is what happens when you get a common culture and hire only those who fit in it.

cristianpascu 11y ago

I'm not from US, but I wonder, in the context of the current cultural shift and war on gay marriage, how are software companies looking at personal opinions on cultural matters like this one? Will that guy in the corner, who politely holds his views on a sensitive matter like gay marriage, make everyone else uncomfortable and, eventually, he'll have to leave?

jsprogrammer 11y ago
This happened at Mozilla.
- jaawn 11y ago
  That was the CEO though. Leaders will always (and should always) be treated differently than employees when it comes to personal views. Leaders often become de facto company spokespersons, and being outspoken against a lifestyle that your subordinates may engage in can have a lot of negative impacts at work, if your opinion is not clearly the majority opinion. This is especially true of the CEO—the 'face' of the company and main decision-maker. So, I don't think what happened at Mozilla is a good example of the whole "guy in the corner" thing.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    I've never been to Mozilla, so I have no idea what actually goes on in there.
    - jaawn 11y ago
      We're referring to this: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/03/us-mozilla-ceo-resignation-idUSBREA321Y320140403 http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/03/us-mozilla-ceo-res...
      - jsprogrammer 11y ago
        I know, but I'm not sure CEO is a standard unit. Was/is Brenden Eich a "guy in the corner"? I have no idea because I've never worked with him. Does the CEO of Mozilla perform any type of leadership role? I also don't know, as I've never worked there or been there while others were working.

itgoon 11y ago

How do you know that the culture you're hiring for is all that great for getting results? Is this culture the one you're going to need in the future? What if you have a need, and there's nobody that fits your culture? If you're understaffed, is it really better to keep asking your staff to work extra while you satisfy the culture requirement, even if it's just while someone ramps up? Lastly, "culture" seems to be another way of saying "we don't really know what works, so we just look for people we personally like". I've worked with many people I didn't like, or even got along with (I'm sure others could say the same of me). Focusing on tasks and goals, communicating regularly, and having decent work habits went very far.

b6 11y ago

When we say we want diversity, I think we tend to mean we want diversity of perspective and experience and way of thinking. But when we try to implement diversity, we tend to do it by body shapes and colors and genders. > I think the biggest thing is to acknowledge that we are all human and we like people ... This sentence was off to such a good start!

brobdingnagian 11y ago

We need to work together to make culture-fit a bad word. "Culture fit" means discrimination along dimensions that shall not be named, for were they to be named they would be illegal.

metamet 11y ago
What are your thoughts on hiring someone you want to work with vs hiring someone you don't want to work with?
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Should depend on why you want to work with them. You want to work with them because they are competent and results-oriented? Good. You want to work with them because they are eager and capable? Good. You want to work with them because they look kind of like you and like the same beers you do? Nope.
- brobdingnagian 11y ago
  Let's just unravel what it means to not want to work with someone: you are chipping away at them as a person who is trying to survive. You are an agent of natural selection in action. If that's part of your identity, I think you're a jerk. If it's not, then hire them and offer to help them out. Don't try to change them too much - just bring them back within the normal range. Offer them CBT or just be nice to them. At the very very least, if you're not hiring someone because you don't think you can work with them, tell them, and suggest they get some counseling.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  What happens when you want to work with is indirectly based on a protected class (for example, it isn't that you want to work with a man, but you want to work with someone who fits a list of qualifications that excludes most women but very few men)?
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
It would be simple if this was always true. But you can have cultural differences along lines that are legal to discriminate upon (and I don't mean technically legal like sexual orientation, but along lines that most would agree was a good reason to not hire). But being that there are legitimate reasons to not hire someone that can be abstractly classified (like with 'cultural fit') and since there is an incentive for the employer to do such (giving a detailed explanation of why someone wasn't hired just isn't in the employer's best interest), there is going to be a smoke screen by which employer's practicing illegal discrimination will be able to hide behind. Short of always requiring a detailed reason why a candidate was passed over, there will always be the possibility to fudge an illegal act of discrimination to look like a legal one (and even a detailed explanation requirement wouldn't fully fix the problem).

yanilkr 11y ago

Jerks and culture misfits need jobs too. If you deny them, one day we might all end up working for them. Misfits and jerks found the industry. Myers Briggs personality test, which was a standard practice once is now irrelevant in the tech industry and its a good thing. Those personality tests would disqualify many good tech professions. It has been hard for me to have any strong opinions about hiring. Many people disproved all previous assumptions. Skills do matter, some people are much better than others. Some people are good to talk to and are comforting to be around but they don't get the job done. They can use their soft skills to convince you why something was impossible to do. Problem solving skills, learning skills, risk taking behavior, passion for something, tenacity, optimism etc are also very important in judging a candidate for a technical role.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
> Jerks and culture misfits need jobs too. Why can't the jerks learn to get along with people? Why must we, collectively, bend over backwards to put up with their bullshit? Culture misfits, sure - some people just aren't super personable, but are still good at their job. But being a jerk is a choice, and one that not many people are willing to put up with.
- cholantesh 11y ago
  >Why can't the jerks learn to get along with people? In some cases, wouldn't the answer be mental health issues (eg. autism)?