[nj5rq]

> modern HR philosophy seems to be "Always keep the employee/candidate on their back foot." Always make sure the corporation is Alpha Dog.

This is absolutely true. A good way of accomplishing a more submissive team is by making it more diverse. If the members of the team can't relate to one another, the less personal connection, and the more submissive each person is to the guys on top.

I am sure some people will think this is not the case and that companies just care about "making things right".

[cjcenizal]

Learning how to understand, relate to, and collaborate with people who are different from you is part of growing up.

[nj5rq]

Sure, but do you think that's the reason why there is an interest in promoting diverse teams? For helping the people "grow up"? Besides, that's only true if the differences are relatively small, you can't understand and relate to everyone. You can obviously collaborate with them on a professional level.

[cjcenizal]

I think mature individuals will be able to overlook significant differences in one another and focus on the outcome: helping the team and the business succeed. If I picked up a signal that a candidate wouldn’t meet this bar, I wouldn’t hire them.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Reminds me of working with Japanese teams.

Some of these guys hated each other, but, when the boss said "Go!" they put their differences aside, and all gave 110%, to meet the goal. They helped each other out, shared information, and never sabotaged anyone else's work.

Japan has the strongest teams that I've ever seen, but there's cultural reasons, and it would probably not scale to many other cultures. There's also tradeoffs, and many people would not be happy with those.

If you want a culture that is really good at ganging up on a problem, then Japan is a good bet.

They wouldn't dream of testing for "cultural fit," because that is assumed.