[wysifnwyg]

Good hiring managers will recognize that everyone doesn't have to like everyone. Work isn't a social club, it's a business in the market of delivering products. If candidates aren't measured on a metric of their capability to deliver and instead is measured on their metric as a drinking buddy, your company needs better managers.

[hwbehrens]

I think this is an over-simplistic view.

Of course work isn't a social club, but it (usually) is a team environment, which means working closely with others to achieve a goal. And if a candidate can't avoid offending one person for one hour (with a strong incentive to do so!), it's a sign that they probably aren't going to be able to work as effectively in that team environment as someone who exhibits at least a baseline of social skills.

In a working environment where each developer can be siloed away to work on an individual module/task, document it, and toss it over the wall, then I'd agree it probably would make sense to go strictly off the performance numbers. But that doesn't look like any working environment that I've encountered (yet).

[wysifnwyg]

If a team is a good team without the assistance of a team manager, the manager is superfluous. A good manager can make a good team out of a diverse group of individuals.

[nscalf]

Work actually is a social club. You don't need to love everyone, but you shouldn't feel uncomfortable. If you're unhappy at work, your work will suffer. If you're excited about what you're doing and you have your team's back, then you will deliver more value. Excellent engineers can be a good find, but teams build excellent things. There is a reason everyone doesn't work in isolation.

[wysifnwyg]

Unless you own the company, you don't pick all your managers, coworkers, and clients. It's an exceptionally valuable team skill to be able to work with someone you wouldn't invite out for a beer. Learning to work with different viewpoints and behaviors builds character and makes one more competitive. Effective managers know this.

[nscalf]

You don't need to pick all of your managers, coworkers, and clients. That's the point of vetting a company culture before you join. In general, the culture should be a reflection of a shared ideology for business and interpersonal behavior. There is a ton of room for variety within that, but it pins some underlying important traits.

Being a good culture fit does not mean you have to like them so much that you're inviting them out for a beer. And in order to really be a long term competitive company and team, you need to be able to be unified first. If there is significant internal turmoil, or people are unmotivated, uncomfortable, threatened, etc. you will never be competitive. "Building character" is generally code for "deal with this crappy situation", and life is too short to make people miserable. You can get a diverse group of people without making all of them unhappy if you select for people who can work together.

[wysifnwyg]

More important than any culture fit is for a business to make a profit. Without that, there's no business to begin with, and while I concede that different traits can make that easier or harder, a good manager can make a team where none would have emerged without them. It's repeated often that employees don't quit bad jobs, they quit bad managers.

A good manager will inspire motivation, bring comfort, foster a nonthreatening environment with an appropriate level of conflict, and shape a competitive force to be reckoned with. This does not mean creating a hug box. Not having a hug box doesn't mean employees have to be unhappy. It's bad managers whose ineffectiveness allows negative traits (which everybody has) to impact other employees.

[jasode]

>Good hiring managers will recognize that everyone doesn't have to like everyone. [...] as a drinking buddy,

In every thread where people go through great pains trying to clearly articulate why creating a cordial, amiable, and friendly work environment is important, people don't read that with charity. Instead, it's always twisted into "drinking buddy".

Let me try some different examples as models. Penn & Teller magicians are "not friends" or "drinking buddies".[0] However, they are friendly and cordial in their working relationship.

Another example is Golden State Warriors basketball teammates, Steph Curry & Klay Thompson.[1] They are very friendly with each other as work associates on the basketball court but they are also not drinking buddies. Steph is a family man with 3 small children. In contrast, Klay lives a bachelor lifestyle. Obviously, they don't need to share beers every week to be deadly effective as a team on the court.

It's perfectly acceptable to try and create those levels of employee camaraderie without being drinking buddies. The gp was talking about rejecting "rude people" that disrupt office harmony and that's acceptable to create cohesive teams like Penn & Teller and Steph & Klay.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=penn+%26+teller+not+friends

[1] https://np.reddit.com/r/warriors/comments/6avmse/ama_w_marcu...

[wysifnwyg]

Given their history, I would say they aren't friendly and/or cordial. I'd say they're professional.

[jasode]

>Given their history, I would say they aren't friendly and/or cordial.

There are various interviews with them throughout the years and they are quite genuinely friendly with each other. However, they have different personalities and they are not drinking buddies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv_Xkz9zepI&t=21m0s

They said their enduring relationship is based on professional respect instead of socializing.

Regardless, I still don't understand why not hiring "rude people" who you feel may disrupt the workplace is "discrimination". There is no special protected class of discrimination against unpleasant rude people! It also works both ways: if the candidate determines that the hiring manager and/or coworkers interviewing them is rude, they have a right to reject the company. There is no ethical standard to tolerate rude people from either side.

Again, to emphasize, the gp was talking about rude people; not black people nor women, etc. So the sibling comment twisting the gp's comment into racism and misogyny is putting words into his mouth he never said and degrading the HN discussion.

[wysifnwyg]

Are disabilities not a protected class?

[jasode]

>Are disabilities not a protected class?

Ok, I see your confusion. Yes, disabilities are a protected class. However, being in a protected class does not provide the job candidate a free license to be rude and force other employees to suffer their rudeness.

And likewise, black race is protected class -- but the law doesn't require employers to hire "a black rude person".

Same for women or older-aged job candidates. Being a rude and disrespectful 65-year old female job candidate means the company can still reject on the grounds of being rude. This separation of reasons is allowed and is exactly how the discrimination laws are spelled out:

- may not Discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, marital status, or political affiliation.[1]

Note that Equal Opportunity Employment does not protect on the basis of rudeness. There are plenty of black applicants to hire who are not rude, and likewise, plenty of ADHD/ADD/Asperger applicants who are not rude that can be hired.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/site-information/no-fear-act/protections...

[oarabbus_]

I'm not sure if you're intentionally misrepresenting his argument but he is saying he doesn't want to walk on eggshells around coworkers, not that he wants to like them enough to grab a beer with them.

[wysifnwyg]

They state they are a hiring manager. If they can't manage difficult but productive employees, they may need some aid learning how to manage effectively.

[nscalf]

It's very easy to manage them: don't hire them. Bringing on someone who is a disruption to an already productive team because they seem like they may be a good individual contributor, based off the extremely limited exposure you have had to this individual, is a bad idea.

[wysifnwyg]

It is exceptionally easy to manage when there's nothing to manage. At that point, managers are superfluous, and the company is wasting money and not maximizing their profits that could benefit from a good manager working with excellent contributors with imperfect dispositions.