[ChuckMcM]

This reads like someone didn't get the offer they wanted, and the reason given was that they were not a good fit for the company's culture.

First, if this was the motivation for this post then I'd recommend you take a deep breath and relax. Its not about you, its about them. And trust me when I say if someone doesn't hire you because they don't think you would fit into their culture, thank them. Nothing is worse for your own self esteem and sanity than trying to get stuff done in a company trying to reject you culturally.

Second, understand that culture rejections are like date rejections, sometimes its the real reason, sometimes its a more polite way of saying 'no thank you' but in either case move on.

That said, you spend a lot of time at the office, and you interact with these people in a day to day way, startups are by their nature small and like families small issues can be big problems (do you squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom or the middle?). Unlike families, you get the opportunity to pick a new startup when one doesn't fit. Avail yourself of that opportunity.

[harryh]

Your guess is wrong, and an easy way for you to dismiss the issues that the blog post brings up.

[ChuckMcM]

I was trying to be nice.

[harryh]

You were dismissive. That's not nice.

[ChuckMcM]

I would be interested in what gave you the impression I was being dismissive, I was shooting for compassionate.

Tell you what, now that I have a bit of time, allow me to share with you my reasoning on why I responded the way I did, and perhaps you can share what you got out of our author's post.

I have always held that 'snark' is a unit of emotional hurt, and this particular posting appeared to be quite snarky. When I read provocative prose with words like 'lies' and 'nuevo-social' and '1% poster children' I see snark. And in this case 'I got no pony!'[1] level of snark. Thus I read the posting with the impression that the author had suffered a strong emotional blow and was venting. With that much hurt (perceived) I gave them slack for their otherwise very sloppy reasoning.

Our author asserts, "Culture is about power dynamics, unspoken priorities and beliefs, mythologies, conflicts, enforcement of social norms, creation of in/out groups and distribution of wealth and control inside companies." which is a highly arguable statement. I would posit that culture is about creating a structure to both set expectations and define success in an environment. Nothing about power over you or creating "in" or "out" groups or wealth or any of the things our author asserts. Our author further asserts that "Culture is exceedingly difficult to talk about honestly." which is also not true, they are attempting to be "honest" here in spite of their own declaration.

As the topical 'setup' for what is an emotional rant, the entire position statement in the first five paragraphs says exactly one thing "I (the author) am mad that I am unable to understand (or possibly to accept) what people are asking of me with regards to my behavior around others."

What follows then are a series of "sound bytes" pulled out as sub-heads with the author's flawed understanding of what they mean. The author has gone out of their way at times to attribute a level of deceit and malice to others that borders on paranoid but let's stick with what they wrote and go over it shall we?

On the sound bite "We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit" the author claims the intent is " ... We have implemented a loosely coordinated social policy to ensure homogeneity in our workforce. We are able to reject qualified, diverse candidates on the grounds that they aren't a culture fit. while not having to examine what that means ..."

That reads very much like they (or someone they knew) considered themselves "qualified" and yet their application for employment was "rejected as a poor cultural fit." It seems they have taken the path that it is simpler to blame this on some malicious prep school like club when, on closer inspection it never is. The fact is that startups are desperate for qualified talent, that is what makes them go, however if the way in which a candidate comports themselves suggests they will cause friction with people who are already hired then, even if they are qualified, hiring them would be a bad decision if it increased problems at work.

Let's used a contrived example, lets say that three guys decide to start a company and they have always had a rich tradition of commenting their code. In fact they often exchange ideas in comments as they check things into a source repository. They find that this transparency in the thought process allows them to evolve the code based faster in a compatible way. Now, when interviewing to employee #1 (or #10 doesn't really matter) they ask about writing comments in code and the candidate replies : "Writing comments in code just slows me down, anyone to stupid to not be able to see what the code does shouldn't be reading my code." They may stop right there and say, "Thanks, but your not a cultural fit for company."

Nothing about power, nothing about secret societies, just a knowledge that working with this candidate won't "flow" because they depend on that dialog in comments and this candidate is unwilling to write comments. It's the founder's company, and this is a classic case of find people who are "a cultural fit."

Sound byte number two is "Meetings are evil and we have them as little as possible." which our author conveniently translates to "We have a collective post-traumatic stress reaction to previous workplaces that had hostile, unnecessary, unproductive and authoritarian meetings."

One asks (and I did) "Where did that come from?" And I answered myself with "I wonder if this person doesn't have any tools for keeping in touch with what is going on, and so a lack of meetings threatens them." Because keeping in touch as a developer is as straight forward as reading the commit log and talking to people. Now from a strategy, vision, mission perspective? Sure you want someone to let you know where you are heading, but most engineers hate a weekly status meetings that don't provide any value. So it seems our author has again projected their own mis-understanding into some malicious deceit.

One which stuck right out was the response to "We don't have a vacation policy." The authors interpretation of this is "We fool ourselves into thinking we have a better work/life balance when really people take even less vacation than they would when they had a vacation policy."

It would have helped had the author suggested what they interpret that to imply (wow that is a lot of indefinits!) but they chose not to so we have to speculate. Immature individuals will interpret a 'no vacation policy' to mean they can take vacation whenever, and for as long as, they want. A more reasoned interpretation is that folks can count on taking some time off to rest and recover once their product ships. A 'no explicit policy' does not mean that folks don't care how much you produce, rather it has always meant that you take time off to keep your productivity high when you are at work. Some people cannot handle that level of responsibility, either through lack of maturity or through mixed expectations. It isn't the culture that is evil though. Its like teachers who don't grade the homework, they still expect you to do it so that you have satisfied yourself that you understand the material. It doesn't mean "woo hoo we don't have to do the homework!"

Every single 'culture' point our author attacks they do so in a way the imputes some amazing ill will on the person espousing the point.

The most charitable interpretation I could come up with was that this person was feeling hurt, I accept that it is possible they are simply quite immature, or unable to internalize the concept of a culture model based on peer respect rather than explicit rules. I don't know if they read HN but on the off chance they did, I was trying to express, compassionately, that people aren't trying to deceive you with this discussion of culture, they are trying to communicate. Once you understand what they are saying you will understand better whether or not you want to work with them. I guess I failed at that.

[1] http://i-want-a-pony.com/

[harryh]

There is much that I disagree with in this comment. And that's ok! Disagreement about this sort of thing is good! It's how we can have real discussions about what works and what doesn't about the cultures we create. I'm going to attempt to respond in depth in a followup comment but I wanted to go ahead and start by saying this this comment is FAR FAR better than your first because it actually addresses the issues that Shanley brought up.

In your original comment you ascribed motivations that are simply not true. Rather than discussing the merits of her essay you simply assumed that she didn't get a job so her thoughts could be dismissed without serious engagement. This was pretty patronizing. But anyways thanks for following up with a much more substantive explanation of your thoughts. I will attempt to do the same.

[harryh]

Let's say a couple of guys start a company to make it easy for people to send money back and forth to each other over email. They, like all startups, are desperate for talent so they recruit like mad. But it's important to them not only to get folks with engineering chops, but that they get folks who will fit in with their culture. In fact, one time they reject someone because he said that he liked to play hoops and they thought that was a funny way to say basketball.[1]

Fast forward to another tech boom. We've got another company, vaguely similar to the first, but this time they want to make it easier for websites to accept credit card based payments. They also recruit like mad and care a lot about culture. In fact they have something called a Sunday Test: "if this person were alone in the office on a Sunday would that make you more likely to come in and want to work with them?" It's a bit less clear what that means in this case, but it certainly sounds like they are optimizing for homogeneity.[2]

Those two stories are both about culture. They're both about companies working hard to define their own internal culture in a way that they think will make them more successful. Further I think that, in many ways, that they are right about this guess! Monocultures are very very useful in small early stage startups!

But aren't the effects of this kind of fucked up? Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the fact that not making a job offer to a guy because he used the word "hoops" is a little weird? And this doesn't even get into related issues of race or gender or class backgrounds.

Much of Shanley's post is about this sort of thing. She's not saying that meetings are great, or flat hierarchies are bad or that free lunches are bullshit. But she is saying that these things aren't 100% good. They come with some significant downsides that are rarely acknowledge inside of the "everything we do is awesome" startup bubble.

I don't think she is imputing ill will (well mostly, she is a bit). Rather she's just trying to throw some water in the face of a very self satisfied startup culture. She's saying "look around you guys! Some of these values that you think are 100% awesome have some big downsides!" And I think that is very laudable.

Apparently some of her rhetoric was a bit off the mark as some people are dismissing her post as bitter. That's too bad, because I think that she brings up some very real and very important issues.

1. http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-...

2. http://firstround.com/article/How-Stripe-built-one-of-Silico...

[ChuckMcM]

Ok, well I think I see where we part ways, lets see if I can communicate it.

I'd like to preface this discussion with a simple question, "Have you experienced working a company where you did not fit with the culture?"

I think it is important to consider that question in the context of discussing culture because it is informs on the downside, or the negatives associated with a poor fit. From reading your response, and shanley's post, I do not see that experience in your writing.

Before getting to your specific argument, its important to know if you agree, or at least acknowledge, that a cultural misfit can be very impactful on how somone experiences a situation. The sexism of a 'brogrammer' culture, casual racism of a supremicist culture, or even the passivity of a conformance culture. So let us agree on what we mean when we say what is 'culture' and what is 'not culture.'

When I say that our company has a 'we have a culture', I mean it to encompass those "principles we value", the "expectations we put on behavior", and the "judgments we apply to our interactions". In its simplest form it defines the kinds of qualities and behaviors we admire in our co-workers and those qualities and behaviors we dislike. I would further stipulate that for any group of people who spend time together, the degree with which those values and judgments align directly correlates with the 'pleasure' of spending time together.

I think if you can't understand these claims about what I mean when I talk about culture, then its safe to say we'll not make a lot of progress :-)

So lets look at your argument.

You use as your first example, Max Levchin discussing the importance of a consistent culture at PayPal in the early days, and their decision not to hire someone because they called the game of basketball 'hoops'. And you agree with Max's claim that a small group of people that share a very similar culture are more productive. Then you add this: "But aren't the effects of this kind of fucked up? Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the fact that not making a job offer to a guy because he used the word 'hoops' is a little weird?"

What Max says in this is that the general consensus on the existing team is that sports are a waste of time. I know a number of engineers who hold that view, they are amazed you can earn 9 figure incomes by throwing a ball around. Max seems to recognize that if this candidate came in and talked about "march madness" (the NCAA Tournament) they might be chided or kidded for their enthusiasm, snarky comments would be made about going to 'waste their time bouncing a ball while the team gets the product done' or something equally lame. Max was protecting this candidate and protecting the team at the same time. People can be very passionate about sports teams, and not respecting their team, or their sport, often gets translated into not respecting them. That is corrosive.

Your second example came from a recent article that was shared on HN where the folks at Stripe talked about the 'Sunday Test' question. That isn't a candidate question, that is an interviewer question. The interviewer asks themselves, "Is this candidate so awesome that if they felt they needed to be here Sunday to get what they were doing done, would I want to come in here and help them get it done?"

I don't know if you read it that way, but it is a 'gut check' on the part of the interviewer to see if they feel the kind of chemistry (or cultural fit) with this person that would inspire them. Given the challenge of finding people, and the down side of picking poorly, it's a way to try to get around how much you might "like" their presentation to see how you really feel. That level of self awareness doesn't come naturally to people, so tools like this help.

So I think you answered your question, the effect is not fucked up, the effect is that the team doesn't get distracted and this possible future employee doesn't feel alienated. Paypal avoided hiring people who would feel bad at work, Stripe gave their interviewers a way to ask themselves "how do you really feel about hiring this person."

And yes, its about culture, but it isn't about lying, its about honesty and knowing how the current team values things.

You added, "Much of Shanley's post is about this sort of thing. She's not saying that meetings are great, or flat hierarchies are bad or that free lunches are bullshit. But she is saying that these things aren't 100% good. They come with some significant downsides that are rarely acknowledge inside of the 'everything we do is awesome' startup bubble."

And this is where I think we read different articles :-) Shanley was calling out what she perceived to be lies. She didn't call them "often misinterpreted statements" or "meaning perhaps not what you think they mean". She said, "This is not a critique of the practices themselves, which often contribute value to an organization. This is to show a contrast between the much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are rampant in our startups and the materialistic trappings that can disguise them." and then goes on to assert that each sound bite is code for some rampant abuse of trust or an attempt at deception.

Shanley argument fails the test of truth, which is one way to analyze her rhetoric. She asserts time and again with the lead "What your culture might actually be saying is ..." So follow that lead. Now take any one of her sound bites and say "Ok we stipulate this is the actual culture." Now does it pass the sniff test? Does it even make sense?

Start with #1: We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit

Stipulate her assertion: We reject qualified candidates based on superficial and unimportant reasons.

Now go find a startup where this assertion holds and the startup has made it through seed funding much less a series A.

#2: Meetings are evil

Stipulate: We avoid projects that require strict coordination across the company so that we don't have to have meetings.

Find a company that does that.

#3: We have people responsible for making work fun.

Stipulate: A mostly female team exists that gets the mostly male workforce to stay late.

Etc, etc. They all fall down. Startups don't do those things, they can't afford to.

There is nothing in her article that supports any of her assertions, even anecdotes, its all snark as far as I can see, and by now I think I've read it four or five times. She is either very inexperienced, very hurt, or both, but I don't think she has surfaced any deep cover up or deception.

[gruseom]

Chuck was offering one interpretation and trying to help. That's no reason to snap at him. Of his many comments here has even one ever been mean?