[tptacek]

Chuck, this thread stops being so benign when it starts offering up defenses for Levchin's hiring advice, which is frankly odious. That Levchin note is prefixed with a recommendation to actively resist diversity early on, and is followed by a rationalization for gender discrimination.

If "culture fit" starts becoming a shibboleth for prejudice, that's just fine with me. One problem my company has never had is discrimination, but the occasional genuflection to "culture" in our hiring process has always annoyed the hell out of me; it was never more than the excuse we made for making hiring decisions without evidence.

[ChuckMcM]

Fair enough, let's not confuse ourselves though.

Shanley's blog post asserted as motivation malice (vicious lies) to some common phrases used to describe some company cultures. She didn't really support any of her argument and used a lot of emotionally charged language that I interpreted to mean she had been told that she wasn't a good 'culture fit' for a job.

harryh here, felt I was being dismissive (pejoratively) of her accusations, which I sought to understand better as that wasn't my intent. He proceeds to try to put together an argument around the emotion shanley wrote.

The basis for my compassion to shanley's emotion was that I have experienced people who are trying to work in a place that is incompatible with a company's culture, and so I see 'cultural fit' as a legitimate line of reasoning for not offering someone a job. I've also seen those same people flourish when they found a better fit for their style of work.

That said, any part of a company's culture that is based on sex, age, race, religion, or sexual orientation is fundamentally illegal. But that isn't what we're talking about here, people who "love sports" are not a protected class.

So perhaps it is required that one stipulate in a discussion on culture that any culture that subverts existing anti-discrimination laws either by intent or by proxy is bad and should be called out as such. Prosecuted even. If so, consider it so stipulated.

And I would be the first person to say, in a discussion of company culture that the more inclusive and supporting a culture is of diversity and viewpoints, it is both healthier and more successful for the company over all as it is welcoming to the largest number of potential employees.

But that is not what this thread was about. Not for me. This thread was about ascribing malice and deceit to some concepts that are bandied about in the form of company culture. I see it as unfair to those companies who really care about their employees, and offering up one of these as a company value only to find the well poisoned by a someone such as shanley. To what end?

[danielweber]

I've seen people cut from the hiring process for having the wrong religion, gussied up as "culture fit."

I was, as it happens, also that religion, but I was in the closet so they didn't know.

People of differing cultures can easily co-exist, just as long as one culture isn't trying to eliminate the other.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminationism

[ChuckMcM]

It is a problem, my nephew ended up getting his manager fired for attempting to steer the hiring practices from "too much diversity" which was just code for racism. It is incumbent on employees and managers to call out and correct behaviors like this.

I would assert that stating it as a company value that the company seeks to hire all qualified candidates, and a company mandate to report and investigate and if necessary correct any potential discrimination as a strong culture statement. That would be a excellent example of the benefit of a strong company culture. If gave my nephew the courage to speak up, and it made their environment better.

[tptacek]

I agree with 'harryh that you were being dismissive, but also like 'harryh I don't think that's a big deal. It's just a message board.

Rather than take the time to write a coherent response, I'm just going to hose the room down with bullets:

* If a tech company was heard to be rejecting candidates for not liking sports --- for instance, if well-qualified applicants were turned away for not knowing which teams were in the American League Central --- nerds would be on their lawn with pitchforks and torches.

* There are plenty of "classes" of that aren't protected. For instance, your political affiliation is fair game under the law. Discriminating based on personal politics seems reasonable to approximately zero of us.

* Age discrimination is both not regulated in the class of companies occupied by most startups and rampant across the industry.

* Lots of non-protected behaviors are in reality proxies for protected behaviors; in particular, "culture fit" is an extremely common proxy method to filter out older works and mothers.

* In the post we're talking about, the post linked in this thread, and even in Paul Graham's essays, there's a theme of startups having the privilege to ignore antidiscrimination laws early on. It does us no good to pretend that everyone's on the same page about protected employment classes when the most widely cited writings in the field say that the ability not to hire women who might have children† is a benefit of starting a company.

* Environments where team members can't fit in if they don't drink, don't work noon-9:00PM, don't listen to the same music, don't play foosball, or don't each lunch with the team are common in startuplandia, but aren't intrinsic to the concept of a startup. You say you know people who were happier when they left these kinds of companies. But people are also happier when they leave companies where they're harassed. Surely that's not a justification for harassment!

* You say you picked up emotional language in the post, and thus (we infer) engaged with the content differently. You should be aware that studies show that people --- men and women alike --- engage with women differently than they do men.† In particular, the ability to write a blog post and have it not be read as "emotional" is at least in part a male privilege. Try rereading the post, but this time, instead of coming to an early conclusion that it's emotional, tell yourself "this is a radically different perspective on startup culture than I have; what can I learn from it?"

I'm an arrogant guy, but I'm not arrogant enough to assume everyone is on board with this (yet): it is immoral to reject candidates for reasons other than predicted ability to produce for the team, and it is immoral to rationalize non-performance rejections by inventing grounds to predict poor performance (like "culture fit"). In most circumstances, I think it's probably immoral to run companies in a manner that would prevent qualified parents of small children from contributing. There are real culture fit issues, but the air has been so thoroughly poisoned by startup misbehavior that we're probably going to have to invent a new term to describe them.

† Can you spot the problem with this logic?

†† Here's a recent study pertaining to the sciences: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109*

[ChuckMcM]

I was unpersuaded by the argument shanley put forward that specific phrases in use by startups were in fact code for abusive and immoral behavior. So yes, I was (and continue to be) dismissive of the argument. Until harryh mentioned it, I had no knowledge of their sex.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I care very much about good corporate culture and effective teams. And have worked at various times, and various places, to change behaviors that were antithetical to that. Weeding out and shutting down those 'proxies' you mention. I see that as part of what 'management' does, when its working well. I don't believe I've ever stated that I condone any form of discrimination, direct, indirect, or proxied.

I also recognize in myself a tendency to react strongly to speech which indiscriminately maligns what are generally good conceptual frameworks. A similar example was Steve Yegge's maligning the entire concept of Agile programming. It hits a sort of conversational reflexive kneecap in me, resulting in a nearly involuntary response in rebuttal.

It is, as you say, 'just a message board.'

[tptacek]

I'm not here to judge you. If you think the gender of the author had no impact on you, that's great. I'm just suggesting that we keep our subconscious biases in mind as we evaluate arguments.

I don't know what forms of discrimination you do or don't condone. You point out that love of sports is not a protected class; from that, I infer that you might be OK with the idea of discriminating based on that; you are, in fact, (gently) sticking up for that behavior.

I also don't know what forms of discrimination you're aware of. It is clear to me that the operators of many tech startups are not aware of the impact their "culture" has on their inclusiveness. Most of those operators would claim not to be biased against e.g. mothers, but many would in fact be creating environments hostile to them anyways.

When we start to venture into this discussion, it's important for you to realize that we are also validating the post that you've dismissed. Perhaps we're using language that is more congenial to you; that's a fair thing to point out, but if so, again, I suggest you re-read and re-evaluate the post, because you may have missed other things in it.

It is all love† with me and this comment.

† And procrastination

[ChuckMcM]

"I suggest you re-read and re-evaluate the post, because you may have missed other things in it."

This is shaney's thesis statement:

"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. Culture is usually ugly. It is as much about the inevitable brokenness and dysfunction of teams as it is about their accomplishments. Culture is exceedingly difficult to talk about honestly. The critique of startup culture that came in large part from the agile movement has been replaced by sanitized, pompous, dishonest slogans."

You agree that this is a fair and true characterization of "culture" ? You were persuaded by her text that this is an accurate description of what motivates a corporate culture?

[tptacek]

I found that asking the questions she asked about different elements of startup culture was in fact a useful exercise.

[harryh]

Those were all excellent bullets.