"culture fit" is one of the biggest causes of workplace discrimination and I still see it pushed in 'hiring training' as perfectly valid criteria.
Things I've seen teams consider "culture"
- will the candidate go to our weekly study session at the micro-brewery?
- will the candidate stay after work to play multi-player games with us?
- is the candidate entertained by all the Star Wars lingo we use?
If you don't find these discriminatory, think about how well a recent poster from Gaza would have done with them. Not well, I suspect
We had a guy from Gaza in our office - he complained about informal emails sent to invite people for drinks because it was sinful, he complained about a manikin that got dressed up at special occasions because it was immodest.
I don't know what lines to draw here - but be careful when playing with double-edged swords.
As someone who doesn't care for drinks, the quickest way to shut-down all that drinks-are-vital-to-our-culture talk is to declare that I used to have a problem with the drink, but I'm sober now, and watch them stammer something about the event being optional.
Absolutely, but in my experience no other reason shuts down attempts at negotiating/cajoling/follow up questions/suggestions to "just show up and grab a soda" faster than pleading the alcoholism. It appears AA gets more unquestioning deference compared to any other personal/health/religious reasons
Just tell them you don't like drinking. We organize the same kind of meetings over at where I work, and if someone says they don't like drinking, we tell them that water is fine, if they say they don't want to join for whatever or no reason, then we say fine and let them know that the meeting will be always open to them.
So that we can all skip this step:
> we tell them that water is fine
and jump directly to:
> we say fine and let them know that the meeting will be always open to them.
Uhhhh... dare I ask to explain what was going on with said mannequin? What kind of “special occasion” requires this... ritual?
Also, I can’t tell whether you are implying that it would have been better for your coworker to have been filtered out because you think they are too sensitive, or if you are implying that your office asks weird things of people. What is the “double-edged sword”?
Other than that she sat in the corner (nearish the pool table) being inoffensive.
The second edge: there is the risk that healthy aspects of a prevailing culture will be eroded for the sake of an overly vocal regressive minority.
It's a hint of humanity in the belly of the beast that eats our daily lives.
Managers will quickly identify emotional needs and this adherence to neutrality is a telltale sign that something is bothering you. My task would be address that but also keep it from affecting other employees.
But, yes, there are more definitely single-edged swords. Add falchion to the list (or a langmesser, although that literally means "long knife").
I guess it is genuinely hard to draw a non-fuzzy line between "knife" and "sword"...
You better be able to articulate what job-relevant reason is behind your dislike and be able to express it in those terms. If you go with your gut feel alone, you could be easily selecting for physical attractiveness, extroversion, a nice smile or some of the many less acceptable biases. Maybe you have perfectly diverse personal discretion, but most people choose copies of themselves or attractive members of the opposite sex.
I have to work with them? If they have a shitty personality that’s going to be hard.
I’d much rather select for unconscious biases than hire terrible people just to satisfy some people’s idea of what is politically correct.
And how would you come to that conclusion during an interview?
If you make a job posting, get 5 applicants, interview 3 of them and hire 1 it's hard to point a finger and say you did (or didn't) do anything wrong.
But let's say over the course of a year you receive 10,000 applications for various positions and 15% of those are African American. Now say that 10% of applicants get to the interview stage but none of the African American applicants made it to the interview stage then, in the very least, that looks bad. You would need to justify why that's the case.
Discrimination can be subtle. A lot of people who are discriminatory but don't think they are. In the US, for example, you have what are called "second syllable names". These are names that are traditionally AFrican American (eg Lakisha). I vaguely recall reading a study where someone took a bunch of resumes for assistant positions and for a bunch with "first syllable names" they replaced just the name with "second syllable names" and there was a statistically significant decrease in response rate.
So your personal discretion doesn't extend to unlawful hiring and firing practices.
Where did you find/learn the term "second syllable name" and "first syllable name"? I tried looking it up and struck out (aside from some requests for baby names like that), though it's quite descriptive and makes perfect sense.
It did lead me to the wikipedia article [0] about African-American names, which enlightened me a bit on the origins of some of those.
But that's the thing: your mind is capable of making these subconscious connections. So if you happen to be discriminatory against African Americans, names are going to be a signal whether you realize it or not.
I'm oddly reminded of some TikToks I've seen recently where people talk about how they're unintentionally conditioned their dogs with things like "Thank you, good meeting" as something they always say at the end of a Zoom call and their dogs perk up because they know they're going to get attention, go for a walk or whatever.
Forming a connection doesn't require intent from either party.
I'm very aware of the biases that I gained growing up in my household and do my absolute best to crush them. That's why this term stuck out to me; it's not something I had heard but makes absolute sense when I look at how people in my family react to names.
Ah found the thing I was talking about: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...
We can speculate what this means. One possibility is that the Australian public service overcompensates for gender bias by having a lower bar for female candidates. I can’t say if that’s true but this does seem to support the idea that some increase diversity with a lower hiring bar.
Do they dismiss any approaches besides their own? Do they think mentoring is a waste of time? Do they think that their code is so obvious that there's no point in documenting? Do they think their code is so perfect that unit tests are unnecessary? These are good reasons to dislike someone and not hire them.
Do you dislike them because they seem kind of boring? Get over yourself.
> Do you dislike them because they seem kind of boring? Get over yourself.
This is an interesting discussion that brings a lot of vitriolic comments.
A counterpoint that you seem to be dismissing: building a successful team often requires a good cultural and team fit. Hiring just on 'merit' alone doesn't guarantee success.
Consider the example of hiring a 'superstar' that the other team members do not like which would consequently impact the performance of the team as a whole because they don't work optimally. For the manager in charge of the team, culture fit is an important factor alongside others.
If people believe that, then I'll only ask that they acknowledge it. Next time someone talks about gender disparity or race disparity, stand up and say "Yep, hiring isn't fair, the disparity isn't related to innate skills"
It would be a relief, frankly, if every one would just say that and agree on it. The problem is usually that when issues of race and gender disparity come up, a lot of posters then insist that hiring is perfectly fair and balanced and it must be the 'culture' of some races or the 'brain chemistry' of some genders that is the real problem.
And just to make it clear, I don't believe any group has any natural advantage over another, just historical and geopolitical advantage.
Currently, while men hold the majority of the economic and political power in the US. From a purely Machiavellian viewpoint, why should they hire anyone besides other white men? They only stand to lose if business and politics become more egalitarian.
What's changed in the past century or so is that it can no longer appear blatant - "we're better because we say so" isn't cutting it anymore. Still - maybe given a chance a lot of them will find a way to hire each other. "Team culture" is as good an excuse as any.
Why’d I care about that? I only need them to write great code 8 hours a day. What they do outside of that is (mostly) irrelevant.
I don't know if a friend of yours took MDMA, but my friend told me that it is pretty much impossible to be aggressive under its influence, you can't help but love everyone. So, how can it lead to hate?
The explanation was that MDMA strengthens the bounds between people, and the closest people are within that group, the more the outside of the group is seen as a threat, a threat you have to protect your group against. Think of an aggressive mother protecting her baby.
So yes, I see how "culture fit", can lead to harmful discrimination, even when centered around positive values and topics as harmless as Star Wars and craft beer.
1) does this candidate have a positive attitude about the work that they do?
2) is this candidate respectful to the clients they work with? (E.g. a coworker of mine routinely calls our client contacts a "fucking bitch" on internal calls.
These aren't really possible to evaluate in the hiring process, but can be a big problem once theyve already been hired.
In my opinion, evaluation of culture fit is about things that are specific to the company, not “good” vs “bad”, but rather “we do this way, although other ways might be valid in other companies” and “we don’t do this way, although doing so in other companies has merit”.
For example, “we work as a family”. Surely work in this kind of company might bring more joy to some people, but will degrade work-life balance. Other company might have a culture of “work-life balance”, and if observed strictly, it will reduce the quality of team work, but will be much better long term for mental health of employees.
Both cultures are possible, and there are certainly people with strong preference for one culture or the other. I think it is crucial to articulate what kind of culture you have in your company, and select candidates who fit.
Yes, any time you make a decision which treats people differently on any basis, is it is discrimination.
What you probably mean to ask is whether it is illegal discrimination. For which the answer is more complicated. It doesn't seem to be directly illegal discrimination, unless “into the same things” itself directly involves protected characteristics like religion. But it could still be illegal as disparate impact discrimination [0], if it has differential impact on a protected axis without sufficient business necessity.
[0] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-...
Your state may have a specific and more restrictive law, but you are free to be as discriminatory as you want until you have at least 15 employees (under Federal law).
https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/small-business...
I have never found any source remotely close to it but it would be nice if we had a revision history on laws so we could see who added what lines and why. I'm guessing it is out there in some official record.
Back to the spirit of your question; it is legal discrimination. Frankly I support your ability to hire who you want at your company within legal bounds. I also support teams hiring people who will go to the pub so shrug.
You could probably get away with it. Would you feel good about yourself? Would you feel pissed if you found out that you didn't get a job you really wanted, only because another company was trying to fill out their rugby team?
Also, whether I trust them or not does not seem to matter according to your sibling comments.
You can separate the culture of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter as easily as any brand, like Nike and Reebok. Those cultural brands are surely dissolving without the guiding hand of in office guidelines.
In the short term, it would be better for the more experienced developers to be more productive, because their time was worth more, but eventually the experienced developers will leave. If new people aren't trained to replace them fast enough, the system becomes unsustainable.
There are several other areas where eliminating certain activities provides short-term productivity gains at the expense of long-term cohesion. All hands meetings about company direction can be delayed for a month with no negative impact, but if I skip all large company meetings for a year I'd have a much harder time prioritizing tasks (it's unclear which contribute directly to the company's long-term plans and which are busy work) and no idea how to route serious issue only tangentially related to my team.
It's entirely possible there's a looming but currently well-hidden pipeline issue companies are anticipating and trying to avoid.
But, if you're starting out, it's a pain in the butt. When to ask questions and who to ask. Where to get guidance about what, and code reviews have to be done in person. They're super intimidating already (for me anyway). Meeting a core group of people your age at a company is important, as well. That's where you spend so much of your time and those social interactions can't be ignored. I keep in touch with people from jobs I worked at 20 years ago. They will help your network in life and career in the future, and that is all being stunted..... sorry. Got off track. But all important issues, depending on what stage of your life/career you're in.
The Star Wars lingo probably gets old though. It should really be Expanse lingo if they want to stay cool.
No way anyone of those would ever be uncool.
There are plenty of people who like each other that have nothing in common. The idea that the reason people like people is because they are like them just feels ridiculous to me, but maybe I am an outlier. Personally, the more someone is like me, the less I like them.
But the bigger, weirder argument you seem to be making is that you shouldn't hire people that you like. I would say life is too short to be spending it around people you don't like, if you can help it.
I say that it is very possible to hire only people you like, and still end up with a diverse workplace free from abuse. You just need to start with good leaders.
Yes, you are an outlier. There is a very large amount of studies that show that people like people that are like them.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026540750809670...
Fair enough
There is a very large amount of studies that show that people like people that are like them.
The link you provide shows a coefficient of .47 for actual similarity, and .39 for perceived similarity. I'm not good at statistics, but that seems like a far cry from "the reason why people like other people is that they are like them." which is the line I was replying to. If I'm understanding it correctly it would be more accurate to say "people are somewhat more likely to like someone who is like them." If that's what was originally written, then I probably wouldn't have replied.
r, or Pearson's Correlation Coefficient [1], is a value from -1 to 1. for r < 0, the variables are negatively correlated, for r > 0 the variables are positively correlated, and for |r| ~= 0, the variables are uncorrelated. 0.47 and 0.39 are high values of correlation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_correlation_coefficien...
^1: it is, however, curious that similar visualizations can be found in woowoo circles
Anyway I highly doubt his head can really roll from this.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-06-22-activision-bli...
And I'm a long way away from getting that, unless one of my investments pulls a GME or something.
There's a bad way to do "culture fit" which you describe. There's also a good way: list the things you want in your culture (openness to criticism, appetite for learning, honesty, unafraid of challenges, or what have you) and then you construct questions specifically to find those things out, grade the result and weigh together into a culture fit score.
The good way to determine culture fit is to ask the candidate about the specific things you want in your culture, not go by general feeling because then you're indeed measuring something your biased System 1 likes, which is probably just the chimpanzee in your brain trying to determine how likely your blood relations with this person is.
But let's talk about 'culture' for a moment.
In my experience, the tech workers in the US make their "work" their "life" way too frequently to be healthy. What I mean by that is that they do not choose to separate their "work" life from their "non-work" life in any meaningful way. As a result the parts that would nominally be "non-work" like friendships where you travel together, or date, or share political affiliations, or other causes, are not kept separate from your "work" life.
It isn't easy. People interact on social media and at work and so if you're angrily criticizing the plight of the Palestinians on social media, your pro-Israel co-worker may bring that conflict into work with them, which make it harder to get things done. And even when you support the notion that employees are their own people and what they do in their own time is their own business, and not to bring it to work, it shows up anyway.
For a long time people have advocated to "not bring your work home." That helps you maintain family relationships because at home that is your priority. We now also have to "not bring home to work."
I am aware of the situation of an excellent engineer who lost their job because at "home" they were a supporter of the policies of an administration that many of their co-workers despised. I can assure you from my experience with this person that their technical capabilities were in no way diminished by their political preferences, and yet their company saw the "disruption" as a bigger threat than the loss of talent.
So ActiBliz really needs to be corrected here, and firmly, because they allowed a non-professional culture to emerge and flourish within their company at the expense of many of their employees. But it isn't just "bro" culture, it is any non-business culture.
It is one of the under appreciated complexities of what a good manager can overcome.
There are many dimensions to this:
1. Is Alice speaking for the company or can be construed as speaking for the company? Like does her Twitter profile say "VP of X at Y" and is a verified profile? Like I know there are certain topics that have been in the news about my employer that I simply won't comment on because I never want to be quoted in the press as "Employee of X said ...". That's just common sense. And you can also be (rightly) terminated if your actions or statements reflect badly on the company or the company otherwise has to spend time dealing with;
2. Assuming the first person isn't speaking for the company and the second person is simply aware of their social media presence, it gets a lot trickier. I can sit here and say "just do your job" but would I be saying that if I were African-American and my coworker was spouting some White supremacist crap on Twitter? Probably not. There are degrees too. Reposting links on your personal Twitter in your free time is one thing. Putting up a Confederate flag in your cubicle is something else;
3. You should generally be comfortable with what your employer does. So let's say you're deeply evangelical and completely anti-abortion. Should you work for Planned Parenthood? Probably not. I mean if you can and want to, that's fine. But there are limits on what an employer should be expected to do to accommodate your views.
> ... and yet their company saw the "disruption" as a bigger threat than the loss of talent.
Obviously specifics matter here but let me express some generalities.
If you express views where your coworkers don't want to work with you because of those views then yeah you've created a problem. Even for an engineer the technical side isn't everything. You will still need to work with people. Supporting homophobic policies when you have a gay worker means you've brought something into work that has disrupted that work (as an example).
IANAL but in California, it is certainly illegal to fire someone because they displayed a mainstream political party's bumper sticker on their car, even if it is not mainstream at the state level.
It is tone deaf and irrelevant, but they should not lose their job over that. Let the person who has never held a poor opinion throw the first stone.
Not that this is what happened, still bad bosses reap bad behaviour.
I mean I do kind of agree, but I'm not sure if "hire people you dislike" works either? It probably needs to be more of a situation of like "if you're a stanford grad the world isn't just other stanford grads" or something.
Professionals should be able to cope with culture clashes. Fundamentally, if someone isn't professional enough to get along with people who aren't from the same monoculture, they're not fit to work in a modern office.
The issue goes much further than simply "we like you". How safe one feel in ones choices and decision is heavily influenced by choices of peers. If other Stanford grads work at the same place I do, then how bad can the decision to stay be? Similar, if every Stanford grads left, then is the decision to stay still safe or am I missing something.
The relation between culture fit and the probability that someone will commit a crime (like sexual harassment) seems less direct but I suspect there are an connection there. At a society level we know that mixing demographics will reduce trust, and with reduced trust we see an increase in crime.
It is correct to be angry about this, but your answer seems to be vindictive. Next step is to wait for the verdict.
> So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread.
Most businesses operate without sexual misdemeanor happening. On the contrary, I doubt the measures now announced by Kotick will ever be non-toxic. Because here you institute a group that will turn on random employees as they see fit. It is the wrong medicine in my opinion.
Useful would be to accuse the people responsible and use the law against them in a court of justice without arbitration.
Kotick voted for group punishment and I don't really understand how anyone would want to work at Activision to be honest because that isn't the way to get a non-toxic workplace. I doubt we will see much cooperation here.
I want to make a point about "culture fit". "Culture fit" in a company typically comes down to "we like you" and the reason why people like other people is that they are like them. Similar age, background, whatever. It's why Stanford grads probably like other Stanford grads.
This "we like you" can and does lead to discrimination.
But here's the even darker side of this. Toxic cultures of sexual harassment as alleged in the complaint against Activision-Blizzard always come down to a few key individuals who then "spread" by hiring or promoting other people who are like then. I doubt this is ever explicit. It's more that you can sense a fellow predator (make no mistake: they are preying on vulnerable staff).
So without intervention this toxicity will tend to spread. Those who oppose it will leave. Those who tow the lines get promoted.
And it's leadership's responsibility to root this out and eliminate it. Heads should roll here. Maybe even J Allen Brack's and/or Bobby Kotick's. If you want to take credit for the successes you also have to take responsibility for the giant failures here.
Oh and whoever wrote and sent out that statement about how the state was pursuing this was why so many businesses are leaving California needs to be fired. It was so utterly tone deaf and irrelevant.