[stennie]

It is definitely challenging to get a sense of culture fit when interviewing, and Covid has forced some rapid changes for teams that may still be adapting to "temporary" work from home six months later. Companies that are focused on culture fit tend to have some declared core values and a mission statement, but these aren't always part of the ethos of the company/team goals or recognition.

Interviewing is a discussion of fit for both you and the employer, so you should feel free to ask questions (and they should allow time for this in the interview process). I would try to determine how committed the interviewers are to adhering to the company's values and mission, or if those are just words for the careers page.

For example: What is your company's mission statement? Does your team have a mission statement or vision? What is your favourite company value, and why? How do your company values factor into decision making or planning? Tell me about a recent decision influenced by your company values? If good values are embedded in the company culture, I would expect some passion and examples of their influence.

My company tries to be strongly aligned to our core values, and we have value-specific interview questions to be transparent about how those values are applied. For example, for our "Be Intellectually Honest" value one of the interview discussion points might be "Can you describe a time your manager took a stance or action that you didn’t agree with, and how you responded to it.". The spirit & intention of this core value is that we have courage in our convictions but work hard to ensure biases or personal beliefs do not get in the way of finding the best solution. This is not a pass to use candor as an excuse to make kind or unproductive remarks.

I think the specific examples you've mentioned (video during meetings, agenda/format for stand-ups) are more about connection and collaborative workflow than culture. I expect companies will probably have a core value that maps to collaboration, so you could ask how that value is reflected in team activities. Daily stand-ups in scrum are normally quick updates rather than social chatter: what did you work on yesterday, what are you working on today, any blockers. Ideally there will be other team activities that encourage more social interaction (share & learn, beverage o' clock, etc).

Personally I would encourage video-on for synchronous stand-ups and sprint planning. as otherwise it is challenging to feel engaged in the discussion. However, if your team isn't doing this you should be able to have an open conversation on why that is the case. Perhaps there is some underlying issue (video is distracting or unreliable for some) that you haven't considered. Great company culture is owned and shaped by the employees, so you should feel empowered to help make your company culture better.

[three_legs]

Thanks for the detail and for the super helpful actionable advice! I'll give that a try. How would you go about asking the team why they keep their video off? Should I ask during standup, in Slack?

[stennie]

I would start by asking your team lead or manager why the team doesn't use video (particularly for longer meetings like sprint planning), as they may have more context. I expect the daily standup aims to be a fast and efficient status update without the distraction of folks getting their video sorted. There is probably a more appropriate team meeting for discussions, but if you don't have a suitable regular team meeting then discussing in a team Slack channel would be better than sidetracking the standup.

If you want to make the suggestion of adding video to a meeting, think about what the benefits might be for your team and whether there may be more suitable occasions to do so (eg sprint planning or a meeting later in the day). If your coworkers understand more of the Why behind your request they will hopefully be more willing to give this a try. They may also have valid reasons for not wanting to use video too often (camera shy, limited bandwidth, messy workspace, meeting is too early/late in their day, etc).

Another idea that might have less resistance versus changing an existing meeting would be to try starting something new (and optional), like a Tech Talk series. We have occasional internal Tech Talks, where the goal is short technical presentations or discussions (about half an hour) over one of our lunch breaks. Sometimes there are visiting presenters from other offices or companies. These sessions are great if you want to learn more about job-relevant tech that someone is learning, using, or building.

If your goals include fostering more social interaction and connection with the team, you could also try suggesting a format that more directly achieves that. For example, we started a Share & Learn series where anything is on-topic except work. The concept is to facilitate directed discussion about a personal passion topic. We plan for an hour (usually at the end of the day, once a month) with up to 3 speakers and around 15 minutes per speaker plus questions (delivery format up to the speaker). This has resulted in some great talks/demos/discussions which helped us learn more about our coworkers (and beekeeping, craft beer, technical interviews, video game mods, DNS, knots, ballet, ...). We also open those up to everyone in the office and encourage everyone to participate (irrespective of their department/org).

Some companies or teams may not be open to these sort of ideas, but circling back to your original question about trying to evaluate company culture before you accept a job... you can ask about these aspects in interviews as well. What does your team do to keep up with new tech? What regular social or tech sessions does the team have? Is there a budget for team lunches or social activities and how often do these happen?

[three_legs]

Thanks for all the great detail, it's really useful! I appreciate the time you took to share and I feel inspired and more prepared to try some new things out!

[luizfzs]

Not judging, but they might have their video off because they are in their pyjamas, laying on the bed, they might be doing something else until it's their time to speak.