I used to believe in "culture fit" as well but it took me going to a tech conference to realize it was a codeword / gateway for alot of **isms.
And I don't even mean racism - say your potential candidate is older with kids (assuming you're younger) would you pass them because they cannot go out drinking with you after work (a.k.a social circle)?
That said, I agree that you want to work with people you get along with, but it has to be at work. Social circle is the issue for me.
By "social circle" I did not mean people I go out for drinks with - I'd call those "friends". I simply meant people I have something in common with, share the same values with, people I can relate to. If the candidate is older with kids (assuming I'm younger) - he/she should be someone I want to become in the future, someone I respect, someone I'd learn from. Race, gender, age, even education - does not really matter - as long as I'm genuinely interested in that person and feel like I'd enjoy working with them. After many years of interviewing and hiring at various startups this is more important to me than technical skills. Skills could be learned, personalities usually don't change.
I feel like programmer discourse goes in a circle every five years on agreeableness/human factors when hiring. You can say "rigid process and blind hiring!" And then you hire someone you knew was, er , difficult, and it sucks and they get fired and you have to adjust. Then on the other side of the spectrum, you have grumpy people pointing out that it turns out agreeableness turns out to mean coethnic drinking buddies, and how could you?
Imagine you keep applying for jobs and you get none because all the existing employees are recommending their friends who are inferior to you in skills, but the company is prioritizing referrals.
This is, and has always been, a real problem: That your ability to get good positions is limited not by your skill set but by your ability to network.
You only need a laptop to set up a company in this field. If there are separate networks of different ethnities (or whatever you mean by diversity) their companies should be able to win over the ones who are not hiring based on pure skill and abilities. Does this happen?
2. The notion that companies will win purely due to skill is questionable. I would highly recommend listening to "How I Built This". Skill is a significant factor, but companies that win do not always do so based on skill.
Generally if you have good skills people will want to network with you, unless you're anti-social or have some other personality issues. Keep in mind that technical skills are just one component in a good coworker.
This comment reveals another problem - if a person is not interested in networking for the sake of it, they're slapped with the "anti-social" or "personality disorder" labels.
Anecdotally, some of the best engineers I've worked with despise the networking culture and prefer to keep to themselves, while some of the most "social" and "networking" people were grifters who didn't have much skill, but knew how to appear like they do.
> Generally if you have good skills people will want to network with you, unless you're anti-social or have some other personality issues.
Not really. In my experience that is the exception rather than the rule. Especially because most people will have no way to know you have good skills if they don't already know you.
I would put it this way: in these times of massive layoffs, if you're a programmer and you don't network, you're doing it wrong. There are exceptions, e.g. for genius types, but the rest of us better be social.
I am more productive (and generally happier) when working with people I like, and can relate to. Communication is better too, which is pretty important.
And I don't even mean racism - say your potential candidate is older with kids (assuming you're younger) would you pass them because they cannot go out drinking with you after work (a.k.a social circle)?
That said, I agree that you want to work with people you get along with, but it has to be at work. Social circle is the issue for me.