I am not exaggerating. We have never rejected for facile reasons like that. The only “culture” rejection we had was a candidate who became verbally aggressive in a technical interview.

Perhaps your technical bar is very low so you can afford to be picky? If so, your company sounds super fucked up. You’re willing not hiring candidates for dumb reasons when hiring is difficult.

I really enjoy it when techies show their egos and contempt, without having the full picture. I'm speaking with an EM where I work now, who just insulted my entire team and the rest of the engineering organization, and puffed himself up with his resume (which essentially consists of various CTO/VP/Director level positions one failed or small-time startup after another). I'm half tempted to report him to HR, to be honest, because his pointless antagonism serves no purpose other than to stroke his own ego by deriding his peers and venting his spleen.