> There's a reason it's a "culture fit" or "match" and not "culturally identical" or "culturally homogeneous."
The problem, of course, being that they often end up being synonymous.
Similarly "family values" is a dog-whistle for "christian values" in US politics, despite them being different phrases.
> If we assume our current team has a healthy culture, finding people who are compatible with it, that can effectively perform their professional duties without disrupting the ability of other employees to do the same (and, ideally, improving the ability of others to do the same), is exactly what we're looking for when hiring someone (other than technical aptitude).
One can imagine myriad ways that this would be used to reject someone in a really awful manner.
To go back to the parent example: Parents often get up early (because their kids get up early) and need to be home at a reasonable hour to meet their kids. A group of fresh grads has no such requirement and might reasonably work from 11-7 every day, whereas the parent might need to work more 8-4.
The disruption of course being that they only overlap for 5 hours a day and this could certainly be used as an example of how the parent isn't a good fit for the team.
> Sure, it can also be used to illegally or unethically discriminate, but so could any concept you could conceive of to describe "they won't perform well with our current team." Before "not a culture fit" was a popular it was "not a team player."
Yes, and we should strive to eliminate them as much as possible.
I'm not suggesting that you should hire assholes who don't work, but that your hiring criteria should be much more explicit: "Were they abrasive during the interview?" instead of "do they fit in well at <x company>?" being a very contrived, simple example off the top of my head.
The problem, of course, being that they often end up being synonymous.
Similarly "family values" is a dog-whistle for "christian values" in US politics, despite them being different phrases.
> If we assume our current team has a healthy culture, finding people who are compatible with it, that can effectively perform their professional duties without disrupting the ability of other employees to do the same (and, ideally, improving the ability of others to do the same), is exactly what we're looking for when hiring someone (other than technical aptitude).
One can imagine myriad ways that this would be used to reject someone in a really awful manner.
To go back to the parent example: Parents often get up early (because their kids get up early) and need to be home at a reasonable hour to meet their kids. A group of fresh grads has no such requirement and might reasonably work from 11-7 every day, whereas the parent might need to work more 8-4.
The disruption of course being that they only overlap for 5 hours a day and this could certainly be used as an example of how the parent isn't a good fit for the team.
> Sure, it can also be used to illegally or unethically discriminate, but so could any concept you could conceive of to describe "they won't perform well with our current team." Before "not a culture fit" was a popular it was "not a team player."
Yes, and we should strive to eliminate them as much as possible.
I'm not suggesting that you should hire assholes who don't work, but that your hiring criteria should be much more explicit: "Were they abrasive during the interview?" instead of "do they fit in well at <x company>?" being a very contrived, simple example off the top of my head.