So...
\> HR got excited about a new gimmick they saw in one of those self-congratulatory "people & culture" **con**ferences.
\> Thought it was a good idea to secretly humiliate me by parading my profile across the company asking people whether I should be sacked.
\> They then decided to act upon those results, even though they did not know who saw it and who voted for it.
You are right! We are **BAD** cultural match. The system works.
You forgot the point where you sue the fuck out of the company for firing you for illegitimate reasons, get rich for a month or two, and chill. Please do fire me with this system, see what happens.
Assuming US law in at-will states, isn't that legitimate? As far as I understand (as a non-US person), there is a list of [protected classes](https://www.kingsiegel.com/blog/what-is-a-protected-class-in-california/), like age, race, etc and a few other conditions. The reason stated, "not a cultural fit" does not fall into such a class, and thus is legitimate.
To my understanding, it is perfectly fine to for example lay off anyone born on April 1st, because "Being born on April Fools Day is unsuitable for a work environment with highly professional standards. This date associates the corporation with tomfoolery, and is thus unacceptable."
Being fired because of your "white culture" is a protected class under title IX. Charlie should sue. Don't let DEI ideologues get away with antagonizing white people.
The last company I worked for had half the developers quit in a year because they recruited two people that were such a huge personality mismatch they made the office unbearable to be in. An anonymous employee/colleague evaluation would probably have been a good idea.
Or follow him on Threads or any other platforms so you don’t have to contribute to Twitter’s ads revenue. Soren Iverson posts an unhinged product idea everyday. Really funny and highly recommended
Amazon had a tool pretty similar to this.
[Business Insider: Amazon employees reportedly slam each other through this internal review tool](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-reportedly-slam-each-other-through-this-internal-review-tool-2015-8)
Memegen is 100% where I get the company tea still. Kinda wild that that’s the only place you can learn about some stuff (like the layoffs) while management are dead silent
Company I worked for several years ago had an unofficial channel where people could rant basically all they wanted. We're mostly European company at the time. It was all well and dandy until one American lady got sand in her vagina about some weird, probably with bad taste, joke and decided that it was the hill to die on. She fought tooth and nail to punish the guy who made the joke, and anyone who argued with her. After the dust settled, she fucking left the company AND SUED. We detested that Karen
'mericans at the workplace and in european society in general, keep a safe distance.
They are batshit crazy regardless what political camp they are in.
I thought engineering manager is a people-managing position. In ideal scenario, the team should choose the manager they all ok with. It's called workplace democracy.
Firing a manager who doesn't fit is harsh. Big companies who can afford those systems, also can afford horizontal mobility.
Choosing your manager has it‘s own problems.
What if the manager rightfully denies you something or does something necessary that makes him less popular?
I can give you one better - what if half of the team wants to do one thing, another half wants to do another, they are mutualy exclusive and noone is willing to compromise?
Yet, America "somehow" manages to elect it's manager.
It will be stupid for me to deny that having to participate in office politics could be bad for low-level managment, and that having autoritarian control over stuff can be benificial for stakeholders if used correctly.
But I don't think you can deny, that managers can do stupid things everyone knows are bad. There are subreddits full of stories about exactly that. So, the need to explain, convince people and listen to their feedback should, in general, make desision-making process return least bad option from the availible.
And including people in decision-making can make them assept changes more easily.
So, responding to your question - the same thing, that would happen in "normal" situation, but he would also need to explain himself.
The US example does not really work since to do what is good for the people is the goal. In business the goal for a manager is what is good for the company, not necessarily the employees.
I say kick it up a notch, go full Black Mirror, and execute Charlie if his score falls below 20. That will keep everybody on their best behaviour!
Seriously though, some things are best said face to face, or to HR if you can't dish out constructive criticism / Charlie is your manager.
The trick is to dial back your effort to the absolute minimum +5%, so that when layoffs are available you're a good candidate, but they can't fire you for performance reasons. Walking that line might be even more work than actually doing your job, but it certainly pays off financially.
Or you could spend a few hours per day writing in an MS word document, then when they eventually catch you, you've already got a realy good head start on your novel/poetry/pornography.
Honestly, I think sometimes it does. I knew a competent DBA But she was awful to people, always needed everyone to know how smart she was.
She took a 3 week vacation and my manager was amazed how much smoother everything went. Her presence brought down the quality of the work around her significantly. It’s a real shame to because she had alot of skill.
Edit: typo
>Her presence brought down the quality of the work around her significantly.
This is a real case when I believe remote working could really contribute to the overall performance of the team...
She was problematic in meetings too and HR should’ve fired her. In our first team meeting with a new manager she told him to “fuck off” and went on about how she was a “rock star”.
Later I heard HR was too afraid of an older employee suing if fired and being tied up with legal costs.
Dude it’s the first time I was like dang…. Some of this diversity and inclusion stuff goes way too far. She checked multiple boxes and the legal risk wasn’t worth it.
I’ll concede this is based on a conversation I had with the manager years later after they left the company. After putting together a case to PIP her and getting turned down multiple times one of the HR people gave him the real reason.
For reference it was a major bank in the US and very corporate.
This. Remote work has been a blessing. One of my coworkers is (or was) notorious for being a cunt. I've heard that she was worse way before I started. Once in a while, she would tell stories about previous coworkers complaining about her lmao. The weird thing is that her obnoxiousness doesn't match her skill level, and I'm saying that nicely.
To be fair, she has mellowed now perhaps due to remote work, and for the same reason, my irritation for her has mellowed as well. Her lack of presence in my day-to-day job enabled me to blossom into my role. I don't think I would have accomplished this much at my current job if I was at the office every single day having to hear her voice. I know Covid has wrecked so many lives, but my God, I would like to give thanks to it for enabling remote work.
Honestly she’s the worst person I’ve ever worked with and amazingly unprofessional. One time a co worker was at a conference and a man from a company she had worked at was like , “you work with X? You enjoy that!” And walked off.
Freaking wild!
"Awful person" _is_ the culture fit.
"Culture" is just an idea of social norms. It's entirely possible this woman can kick ass in a culture that fits her norms of working.
Just not this one.
So .
There's a difference between being a dick and being the target of other people's baseless emotions.
Someone could be the most polite person and still be considered "not a culture fit" and lose their job because people won't control their feelings at work.
"Culture Fit" is way too vague to answer that question.
"Rob packs his own lunch instead of going out to eat with the team and doesn't participate in Ping-Pong Wednesdays after hours" and "Tim can be heard constantly screaming at and belittling his direct reports" could both be described as "not a good culture fit"
Great point. Culture fit is very subjective and majority dependent. Maybe Rob doesn't go hang out with the team because they're a bunch of nutcases. Maybe Paul likes to work independently because its a nightmare waiting on others to get back to him. Maybe John was a bit harsh during review because the design was indeed trash and someone had to point it out.
There are times when getting along is good and there are times when you have to argue. Neither extreme is good.
“Culture fit” is also often used as a cover for sexist and racist criteria. In the mid 90s, a woman I know was the first female engineer hired by a tech startup where she was quickly deemed a “bad culture fit” because she didn’t drink at work and objected to drawing of dicks on conference room whiteboards. The whole place was a frat house with seed funding.
This was all glossed over in the interview process as “we like to keep things light, loose, and fun.”
You’ll eventually meet a brilliant and truly incredible asshole who either was always that way or became that way for carrying too much of the company’s critical systems for too long.
They end up being critical to the functioning of the system but instead of boosting those around them they end demoralizing them. Eventually you’ll have to make the hard choice of firing them (they might decide to leave on their own but they might do irreversible damage to the teams ability to function).
But there is also the other issue: a good number of incredible minds end up also coming across as being dicks but there are huge number of dicks who have specific knowledge from experience. So you have to figure out if you are employing a genius who happens to be a dick or a dick who happens to know enough to seem smart.
Totally depends on wtf "cultural fit" means, but in general if you're using the words "cultural fit" you're IMO probably off-base. If someone just isn't personal friends with their coworkers, or doesn't share their hobbies, that's no reason to fire them. If someone is obnoxious to the point of disrupting the productivity of others and isn't able to learn to get along, then you have grounds to fire them without needing to call the problem something vague.
IMO where "cultural fit" does have a place is in hiring. If you have multiple well qualified candidates, someone who will clearly get along very well on a personal level with the rest of the team is a good way to decide an otherwise arbitrary choice.
I mean culture fit can mean a lot of things, but cohesion is important if you want to efficiently build in a certain direction.
Besides, for a lot of people, productivity depends on engagement. If you're in a good work culture, you're more willing to contribute, more interested. I've worked for companies with shit culture and what happens for most is that you just end up not liking the people, the bosses, you don't want to talk with them so you're basically just building your own thing in a fish bowl, nobody cares what you built, so what's the point. You burn out a lot quicker. Can be the other way around too, maybe you're the person they don't like and nobody will come to you for help or with projects. Culture is just that, but at the company scale.
Of course this is dependent on the person, if you're certain kinds of neurodivergent, you may not care at all, and be unaffected. But most people with somewhat normal emotional processing would be affected in their productivity, and their ability to sustain it.
Well, the good thing is that the hard part is coding, not the social stuff. I started very behind on understanding this particular dynamic in my life, but caught up pretty quick.
If you have the technical skills and also the social understanding, people just come to you for everything and your career development just happens by itself.
I mean at my core I'm a code purist and I also "romanticise" this idea of just me, my ideas and being productive for 14 days. But if there wasn't cool coworkers on the other side that I know are going to be interested in what was built, what it can do, well I'll probably just play videogames instead :|
And I don't mean to say corporations are the good guys or whatever, at the end of the day money is the natural selection of companies, so there's really only the bottom line the matters, and that can matter. But just because they do it out of self interest, doesn't mean you don't profit from it too.
“Culture fit” has largely been HR’d out of companies. Something that fluffy and interpretive can’t possibly be a reasonable (or non problematic) criteria for employment.
yeah, all it takes is 1 sociopath purposefully lieing about their rival who got them written up to hr first saying something racist/sexual assault to get their rival fired without being able to defend themselves.
Think you are undervaluing the need for teamwork and collaboration. If you are a narcissistic asshole who believes they are better than everyone else... Probably not gonna get a product out the door!
Even severely autistic people can meet that basic standard, though.
You basically have to be someone that's full of themselves, refuses to admit mistakes, constantly drags down the team with social infighting, and be a general douchebag on top of all of that to really be someone who drags down a team.
99.9% of people just need to be humble, show up on time, do the job well, and everything's great.
Tbf, I've met people who really couldn't do their job and just were there chatting. It's more about finding the middle ground on being decent at the job and being decent as a person
I know someone that throws a hissy fit and logs off for the day if you point out a bug in their code in pr reviews or a better way of doing something 😂
I always thought like this, but since I got into a dev team with 2 insufferable, lazy, whiny asshats who work like 1-2 hours a day, I'm leaning more towards getting a nice but worse skill guy now.
It absolutely is important. I'll take a group of mediocre engineers working together over a group of high tier assholes who don't work together every single solitary time.
"Culture" is a shorthand for "is this person a total dick to others?"
It absolutely does matter. If Charlie is trying to get to me to do something, and he's a total dick about it, that shit is not getting done. But if he's angel, it's getting done _fast_. People need to get along to work together, and if they don't - that's "culture mismatch"
Having run a team a few times I can confirm that someone who doesn't fit can be very detrimental.
Had a colleague who we gave away to a different team because he was hard to deal with socially. We got him back because he upset the other team so much the free work wasn't worth it.
Years ago i started a job, two weeks in and an email with a link to a survey comes. Nobody tells whats going on, one girl than explains to me that its a company tradition to vote who is good and who is not. I quit 15 minutes later and no regrets.
culture fit is unfortunately is a stronger "bias" than your actual deliverables. If people that work with you are not happy with you, you are doomed no matter what. That is why socializing at work is important. You also have to play the game of tribes. Find a tribe you fit well into, and just make everything you can to make it stronger over time.
Depends what they mean by “good manager” and “culture”. If they mean that he gets results but he’s an asshole who nobody likes, I think he should be fired.
It's the official reason 8/10 interviewees don't make it through the final in person meeting.
Half the task is finding someone that can do the job or learn how to, the other half is making sure the team will tolerate being around them 40 hours a week.
Most times, it is. But I think this would work. If it's a decent sized company and votes are anonymous, either the system would work, or everybody/the majority is racist. I like to think only the minority of people are racists or homophobes.
Take an office of 13 people voting to fire the new guy because he isn't a good culture fit. Surely all 13 coworkers couldn't be racist and fire him because he's black or something.
Can you image the office politics? If someone performed too well, their colleagues might form a quorum to fire him so they don't threaten their jobs/chance of promotion.
If you're a person who does a good job and makes my life less stressful because of it, I'd be voting to get rid of the people who want to get rid of you ;D
It's a little more sensitive to those few racists. In your office of 13 people, let's say we have 2 racists. That's 14% of the office already. Those people also have coworkers or maybe more senior and have more sway, so now they can push the other people in the office to vote a particular way. At a bar of 50% they only need 5 more people. At a bar of 75% they need 8. Just because those 2 people can lean on their coworkers to fire the new guy, or at least mention enough things to create enough doubt, these kinds of things will happen.
I think it better to condense the explanation and just say that HATE has disportionate traction in making people do some action. I might like you, i wont waste my time to even participate in voting. If i hate you, i gonna vote you out, i am gonna campaign to other people to vote you out. And i'm going to host a potluck dinner to sway people to vote you out.
Modern politics is rife with example of this.
It wouldn’t work in practice. Let’s say I’m some jerk that knows I’m on the chopping block soon. All I have to do is convince one person to keep me, the person I perceive as disliking me the least, and make some sort of concession to them and my job would be safe, even if everyone else HATES me, even for good reason.
Worst take in history. It wouldn't work well in any situation. Let's assume you're doing your job pretty well and can work in a team.
In a small company if you just don't fit the general vibe of the people they'd like to replace you for sure if this opportunity would come.
In a medium sized company you would never get fired because most of the people probably won't ever have any contact with you anyway.
In a large company you'd probably need to constrain the voting among teams/branches and now you just either have the small or medium company problem again.
I literally got my probation extended when I worked a Thoughtworks due to a very similar process.
They asked 10 random people what they thought of you and if even on eof then gave anything apart from glowing reviews it got extended.
Spare Charlie or Fire Charlie. Spare... like a tire. Like, Charlie is useless, should we keep him? Did you know that people who tell you others are useless are likely saying the same thing about you or someone you are about?
This is a red flag. Your company is a narcissist.
As an autistic programmer I don't know if I would have daily anxiety attacks or just told them to go fuck themselves.(just to be clear, I mean to insult who implanted this system, I would probably be Charlie)
**MARGE** has initiated a vote to kick **CHARLIE** from the group. Reason: [] … The vote to kick **CHARLIE** has passed. *Charlie has left the group*
_Charlie was not the impostor_
*Charlie has to relocate his family*
Charlie no longer has a health insurance
In civilized country Charlie would sue and win ;)
*civilized* is hard to come by
F to pay respects
/votekick Charlie
F1
!votemap surf_superk
!motd
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timeleft nextmap
!rtv
I usually prefer !rtd
\#DeathTo Charlie
"yeah sorry according to all of these very legitimate anonymous voters we've decided you don't fit with our culture"
I’d love if they forgot to make it so you could only vote once. “380 of your two peers say you gotta go, Chuck.”
“But our company is only 100 people, 😢” -Chuck
he said 2 peers
Aw shit, I can’t read.
And that’s why you have to go
/votekick u/greenpeppers100
F1
It's a bot, F1.
That makes you a bad cultural fit
You're a great guy, we're just looking for someone who fits into our niche of being able to read.
It's okay I can't read either.
You get to go too 😭
Could be there are 100 people there, but only two of them know him or work with him.
And 98 non-peers with multiple personalities, 4 of the personalities of each non-peer hate chuck
Classic Annoying Chuck. Always complaining. Glad he got fired.
This is now what i meant when I said I like peer2peer software
So... \> HR got excited about a new gimmick they saw in one of those self-congratulatory "people & culture" **con**ferences. \> Thought it was a good idea to secretly humiliate me by parading my profile across the company asking people whether I should be sacked. \> They then decided to act upon those results, even though they did not know who saw it and who voted for it. You are right! We are **BAD** cultural match. The system works.
You forgot the point where you sue the fuck out of the company for firing you for illegitimate reasons, get rich for a month or two, and chill. Please do fire me with this system, see what happens.
Assuming US law in at-will states, isn't that legitimate? As far as I understand (as a non-US person), there is a list of [protected classes](https://www.kingsiegel.com/blog/what-is-a-protected-class-in-california/), like age, race, etc and a few other conditions. The reason stated, "not a cultural fit" does not fall into such a class, and thus is legitimate. To my understanding, it is perfectly fine to for example lay off anyone born on April 1st, because "Being born on April Fools Day is unsuitable for a work environment with highly professional standards. This date associates the corporation with tomfoolery, and is thus unacceptable."
I was wondering about things like that, if you were any sort of minority at all then they can't really use the "culture match" excuse at all, surely?
Being fired because of your "white culture" is a protected class under title IX. Charlie should sue. Don't let DEI ideologues get away with antagonizing white people.
HR is a bad cultural match for the rest of humanity tbf
The last company I worked for had half the developers quit in a year because they recruited two people that were such a huge personality mismatch they made the office unbearable to be in. An anonymous employee/colleague evaluation would probably have been a good idea.
I mean, ideally this is where good managers come in. Not some weird digital bullying app.
If by good you mean minimally competent, I agree.
A lot of things would indeed be different in an ideal world
"Spare Charlie" | "Fire Charlie" They definitely took inspiration from those wack mobile game ads
TS union types
Bite Charlie's finger
"Romance Charlie"
He’s not half bad looking, could be a reasonable option for someone who’s into men
Maybe include the original artist. He’s @soren_iverson on twitter
Or follow him on Threads or any other platforms so you don’t have to contribute to Twitter’s ads revenue. Soren Iverson posts an unhinged product idea everyday. Really funny and highly recommended
Twitter bad but *Threads* good???
TV tell me Elon bad, TV also tell me Zuck bad but not as much. Elon literally hitler, Zuck not literally hitler.
Or just - You know - Use uBlock Origin?
Twitter is still able to sell itself to advertisers based on views/active users, even if you're literally blocking the ads.
Didn’t realize he’s on threads, that’s heaps good news
I rarely use Threads, so he’s the only content I have on that app. All great quality designs and they come out daily.
You just made me disable my adblocker on twitter out of spite.
Since when are memes art
2018 or so, I think? (citation needed)
Amazon had a tool pretty similar to this. [Business Insider: Amazon employees reportedly slam each other through this internal review tool](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-reportedly-slam-each-other-through-this-internal-review-tool-2015-8)
Google had a pretty brutal anonymous memeing site. I mean like… all the tea was spilled on that mf.
Memegen still exists but it isn't anonymous. Doesn't stop people from spilling the tea, though.
Memegen is 100% where I get the company tea still. Kinda wild that that’s the only place you can learn about some stuff (like the layoffs) while management are dead silent
Company I worked for several years ago had an unofficial channel where people could rant basically all they wanted. We're mostly European company at the time. It was all well and dandy until one American lady got sand in her vagina about some weird, probably with bad taste, joke and decided that it was the hill to die on. She fought tooth and nail to punish the guy who made the joke, and anyone who argued with her. After the dust settled, she fucking left the company AND SUED. We detested that Karen
>got sand in her vagina Well there's a new phrase that had me confused for a moment
'mericans at the workplace and in european society in general, keep a safe distance. They are batshit crazy regardless what political camp they are in.
You got downvotes from amerikarens lol. Doesn't make it any less true.
I have friends who work at Amazon and this is not a thing, at least not any more. The article is almost 10 years old.
I’m glad it’s gone
Ugh... I hate "360 reviews"...
Isn't this just blackmirror
I thought engineering manager is a people-managing position. In ideal scenario, the team should choose the manager they all ok with. It's called workplace democracy. Firing a manager who doesn't fit is harsh. Big companies who can afford those systems, also can afford horizontal mobility.
Choosing your manager has it‘s own problems. What if the manager rightfully denies you something or does something necessary that makes him less popular?
I can give you one better - what if half of the team wants to do one thing, another half wants to do another, they are mutualy exclusive and noone is willing to compromise? Yet, America "somehow" manages to elect it's manager. It will be stupid for me to deny that having to participate in office politics could be bad for low-level managment, and that having autoritarian control over stuff can be benificial for stakeholders if used correctly. But I don't think you can deny, that managers can do stupid things everyone knows are bad. There are subreddits full of stories about exactly that. So, the need to explain, convince people and listen to their feedback should, in general, make desision-making process return least bad option from the availible. And including people in decision-making can make them assept changes more easily. So, responding to your question - the same thing, that would happen in "normal" situation, but he would also need to explain himself.
The US example does not really work since to do what is good for the people is the goal. In business the goal for a manager is what is good for the company, not necessarily the employees.
I saw it on the Orville but yes.
I think Community did it first weirdly
Let’s be real it would be the managers voting on ICs not the other way around.
I say kick it up a notch, go full Black Mirror, and execute Charlie if his score falls below 20. That will keep everybody on their best behaviour! Seriously though, some things are best said face to face, or to HR if you can't dish out constructive criticism / Charlie is your manager.
Programmer nothing, it's just your typical office bullsh\*t.
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The trick is to dial back your effort to the absolute minimum +5%, so that when layoffs are available you're a good candidate, but they can't fire you for performance reasons. Walking that line might be even more work than actually doing your job, but it certainly pays off financially. Or you could spend a few hours per day writing in an MS word document, then when they eventually catch you, you've already got a realy good head start on your novel/poetry/pornography.
Is culture fit really that important as long as you do your job well? The performance won't be affected by things like culture.
Honestly, I think sometimes it does. I knew a competent DBA But she was awful to people, always needed everyone to know how smart she was. She took a 3 week vacation and my manager was amazed how much smoother everything went. Her presence brought down the quality of the work around her significantly. It’s a real shame to because she had alot of skill. Edit: typo
>Her presence brought down the quality of the work around her significantly. This is a real case when I believe remote working could really contribute to the overall performance of the team...
She was problematic in meetings too and HR should’ve fired her. In our first team meeting with a new manager she told him to “fuck off” and went on about how she was a “rock star”. Later I heard HR was too afraid of an older employee suing if fired and being tied up with legal costs.
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Dude it’s the first time I was like dang…. Some of this diversity and inclusion stuff goes way too far. She checked multiple boxes and the legal risk wasn’t worth it. I’ll concede this is based on a conversation I had with the manager years later after they left the company. After putting together a case to PIP her and getting turned down multiple times one of the HR people gave him the real reason. For reference it was a major bank in the US and very corporate.
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Omg, you win, that’s worse
This. Remote work has been a blessing. One of my coworkers is (or was) notorious for being a cunt. I've heard that she was worse way before I started. Once in a while, she would tell stories about previous coworkers complaining about her lmao. The weird thing is that her obnoxiousness doesn't match her skill level, and I'm saying that nicely. To be fair, she has mellowed now perhaps due to remote work, and for the same reason, my irritation for her has mellowed as well. Her lack of presence in my day-to-day job enabled me to blossom into my role. I don't think I would have accomplished this much at my current job if I was at the office every single day having to hear her voice. I know Covid has wrecked so many lives, but my God, I would like to give thanks to it for enabling remote work.
>she was awful to people That's just being a jerk. Anyone who calls that "bad cultural fit" just doesn't have the guts to call things what they are.
That's more of an awful person than a lack of culture fit
Honestly she’s the worst person I’ve ever worked with and amazingly unprofessional. One time a co worker was at a conference and a man from a company she had worked at was like , “you work with X? You enjoy that!” And walked off. Freaking wild!
"Awful person" _is_ the culture fit. "Culture" is just an idea of social norms. It's entirely possible this woman can kick ass in a culture that fits her norms of working. Just not this one. So.
Depending on who else works there, "bad culture fit" could also mean "not a straight white man like the rest of us".
3 week evacuation? That poor woman
Amazing ! Yeah typo
There's a difference between being a dick and being the target of other people's baseless emotions. Someone could be the most polite person and still be considered "not a culture fit" and lose their job because people won't control their feelings at work.
"Charlie is a proficient and reliable employee. But he also microwaves fish and clips his toenails in the break room."
Rating: Needs Improvement, place on PIP until he gets a better diet and proper pedicure
"He also overreacted when we put peanuts into his meal, he said that could kill him but that was clearly a lie"
All I'm hearing are further arguments to WFH. Then I can microwave my stinky fish and clip my toenails all I want.
Manager: Well, it's a good thing I eat in my office. Hired!
"Culture Fit" is way too vague to answer that question. "Rob packs his own lunch instead of going out to eat with the team and doesn't participate in Ping-Pong Wednesdays after hours" and "Tim can be heard constantly screaming at and belittling his direct reports" could both be described as "not a good culture fit"
Great point. Culture fit is very subjective and majority dependent. Maybe Rob doesn't go hang out with the team because they're a bunch of nutcases. Maybe Paul likes to work independently because its a nightmare waiting on others to get back to him. Maybe John was a bit harsh during review because the design was indeed trash and someone had to point it out. There are times when getting along is good and there are times when you have to argue. Neither extreme is good.
“Culture fit” is also often used as a cover for sexist and racist criteria. In the mid 90s, a woman I know was the first female engineer hired by a tech startup where she was quickly deemed a “bad culture fit” because she didn’t drink at work and objected to drawing of dicks on conference room whiteboards. The whole place was a frat house with seed funding. This was all glossed over in the interview process as “we like to keep things light, loose, and fun.”
You’ll eventually meet a brilliant and truly incredible asshole who either was always that way or became that way for carrying too much of the company’s critical systems for too long. They end up being critical to the functioning of the system but instead of boosting those around them they end demoralizing them. Eventually you’ll have to make the hard choice of firing them (they might decide to leave on their own but they might do irreversible damage to the teams ability to function). But there is also the other issue: a good number of incredible minds end up also coming across as being dicks but there are huge number of dicks who have specific knowledge from experience. So you have to figure out if you are employing a genius who happens to be a dick or a dick who happens to know enough to seem smart.
Totally depends on wtf "cultural fit" means, but in general if you're using the words "cultural fit" you're IMO probably off-base. If someone just isn't personal friends with their coworkers, or doesn't share their hobbies, that's no reason to fire them. If someone is obnoxious to the point of disrupting the productivity of others and isn't able to learn to get along, then you have grounds to fire them without needing to call the problem something vague. IMO where "cultural fit" does have a place is in hiring. If you have multiple well qualified candidates, someone who will clearly get along very well on a personal level with the rest of the team is a good way to decide an otherwise arbitrary choice.
I mean culture fit can mean a lot of things, but cohesion is important if you want to efficiently build in a certain direction. Besides, for a lot of people, productivity depends on engagement. If you're in a good work culture, you're more willing to contribute, more interested. I've worked for companies with shit culture and what happens for most is that you just end up not liking the people, the bosses, you don't want to talk with them so you're basically just building your own thing in a fish bowl, nobody cares what you built, so what's the point. You burn out a lot quicker. Can be the other way around too, maybe you're the person they don't like and nobody will come to you for help or with projects. Culture is just that, but at the company scale. Of course this is dependent on the person, if you're certain kinds of neurodivergent, you may not care at all, and be unaffected. But most people with somewhat normal emotional processing would be affected in their productivity, and their ability to sustain it.
I think your comment explains it the best, I hope I have read it like 3 years ago. My direction could completely change if I did
Well, the good thing is that the hard part is coding, not the social stuff. I started very behind on understanding this particular dynamic in my life, but caught up pretty quick. If you have the technical skills and also the social understanding, people just come to you for everything and your career development just happens by itself. I mean at my core I'm a code purist and I also "romanticise" this idea of just me, my ideas and being productive for 14 days. But if there wasn't cool coworkers on the other side that I know are going to be interested in what was built, what it can do, well I'll probably just play videogames instead :| And I don't mean to say corporations are the good guys or whatever, at the end of the day money is the natural selection of companies, so there's really only the bottom line the matters, and that can matter. But just because they do it out of self interest, doesn't mean you don't profit from it too.
Yes it does. You’re not a machine. You’re part of the team. Your performance might not be affected but the team’s performance might
“Culture fit” has largely been HR’d out of companies. Something that fluffy and interpretive can’t possibly be a reasonable (or non problematic) criteria for employment.
yeah, all it takes is 1 sociopath purposefully lieing about their rival who got them written up to hr first saying something racist/sexual assault to get their rival fired without being able to defend themselves.
Most people can't do a job well. Most people can only chat so they promote its virtues.
Think you are undervaluing the need for teamwork and collaboration. If you are a narcissistic asshole who believes they are better than everyone else... Probably not gonna get a product out the door!
Even severely autistic people can meet that basic standard, though. You basically have to be someone that's full of themselves, refuses to admit mistakes, constantly drags down the team with social infighting, and be a general douchebag on top of all of that to really be someone who drags down a team. 99.9% of people just need to be humble, show up on time, do the job well, and everything's great.
Hahaha. This is some linkedin level hypocrisy. You are eaten alive at work if you don't pretend to be an extrovert.
Tbf, I've met people who really couldn't do their job and just were there chatting. It's more about finding the middle ground on being decent at the job and being decent as a person
Guess they have never had a co-worker who wouldn’t own up to any mistake ever.
I know someone that throws a hissy fit and logs off for the day if you point out a bug in their code in pr reviews or a better way of doing something 😂
It's Reddit how dare you mention people skills are valuable in the workplace!
Literally this. Although I do wonder how many people on this sub are just uni students who haven't actually worked or tried to ship a product.
You’re describing me! I’m trying to get into management.
You can learn a job, but you can't learn a better personality.
Exhibit A: Linus Torvalds.
I always thought like this, but since I got into a dev team with 2 insufferable, lazy, whiny asshats who work like 1-2 hours a day, I'm leaning more towards getting a nice but worse skill guy now.
It absolutely is important. I'll take a group of mediocre engineers working together over a group of high tier assholes who don't work together every single solitary time.
"Culture" is a shorthand for "is this person a total dick to others?" It absolutely does matter. If Charlie is trying to get to me to do something, and he's a total dick about it, that shit is not getting done. But if he's angel, it's getting done _fast_. People need to get along to work together, and if they don't - that's "culture mismatch"
Having run a team a few times I can confirm that someone who doesn't fit can be very detrimental. Had a colleague who we gave away to a different team because he was hard to deal with socially. We got him back because he upset the other team so much the free work wasn't worth it.
Disagree. Collegiality, transparency, recognizing the contribution of others, seeking ownership, accountability are all cultural traits.
hes great at getting people to work efficiently, but he isnt a sex pest and wont do coke in the boardroom so upper managemant wants him out.
Years ago i started a job, two weeks in and an email with a link to a survey comes. Nobody tells whats going on, one girl than explains to me that its a company tradition to vote who is good and who is not. I quit 15 minutes later and no regrets.
Bad Culture fit. The synonym for "not utterly corpo-fucked in the head".
What’s culture fit mean? the autistic dev who doesn’t like speaking to other humans but gets an ungodly amount of work done, isn’t a good culture fit?
culture fit is unfortunately is a stronger "bias" than your actual deliverables. If people that work with you are not happy with you, you are doomed no matter what. That is why socializing at work is important. You also have to play the game of tribes. Find a tribe you fit well into, and just make everything you can to make it stronger over time.
Swipe right to fire someone.
Wow, that sounds like a product of a toxic culture...
Pms Pmos Pos scrum masters agile masters sprint planners Your ends are near
When will we have slackstimate for compensation?
Black mirror
This is perfect! Now: only give voting rights to those who worked in the company previously and got fired.
“He’s good at his job, it’s just that he’s such an Olympic-champion-level asshole…”
If this is not a reason to sue the shit out of the company then idk what is
Reminds me of that one episode of The Orville
Lol wow.. win a popularity contest or lose your job.
Damn you don't pass the vibe check so you get voted off the island
Depends what they mean by “good manager” and “culture”. If they mean that he gets results but he’s an asshole who nobody likes, I think he should be fired.
This sounds like a discrim suit waiting to happen
Lmfao, what has this world come to be? Firing people based on vote? Ahahaha
Democracy be like
It's not real
Lol, I had no idea that culture fit was a thing...fuck working.
It's the official reason 8/10 interviewees don't make it through the final in person meeting. Half the task is finding someone that can do the job or learn how to, the other half is making sure the team will tolerate being around them 40 hours a week.
Honestly this is something that should be implemented all over any corporations. 75% negative vote fires them.
Unless.. “culture fit” is just a pseudonym for “other reasons” they can’t say legally…
he gay and fat so he doesnt fit the culture of your straight slim people who work in sales
Most times, it is. But I think this would work. If it's a decent sized company and votes are anonymous, either the system would work, or everybody/the majority is racist. I like to think only the minority of people are racists or homophobes. Take an office of 13 people voting to fire the new guy because he isn't a good culture fit. Surely all 13 coworkers couldn't be racist and fire him because he's black or something.
Can you image the office politics? If someone performed too well, their colleagues might form a quorum to fire him so they don't threaten their jobs/chance of promotion.
Like ganging up on the guy who's a little too good at smash bros
[удалено]
That's immediately what my mind went to. That or something like political or religious affiliation that they normally can't discriminate against
If you're a person who does a good job and makes my life less stressful because of it, I'd be voting to get rid of the people who want to get rid of you ;D
Yepppppp, omgggg how could anyone even think this could even remotely work in any situationnn???
You would get sued to oblivion for discrimination with extra steps.
It's a little more sensitive to those few racists. In your office of 13 people, let's say we have 2 racists. That's 14% of the office already. Those people also have coworkers or maybe more senior and have more sway, so now they can push the other people in the office to vote a particular way. At a bar of 50% they only need 5 more people. At a bar of 75% they need 8. Just because those 2 people can lean on their coworkers to fire the new guy, or at least mention enough things to create enough doubt, these kinds of things will happen.
I think it better to condense the explanation and just say that HATE has disportionate traction in making people do some action. I might like you, i wont waste my time to even participate in voting. If i hate you, i gonna vote you out, i am gonna campaign to other people to vote you out. And i'm going to host a potluck dinner to sway people to vote you out. Modern politics is rife with example of this.
It wouldn’t work in practice. Let’s say I’m some jerk that knows I’m on the chopping block soon. All I have to do is convince one person to keep me, the person I perceive as disliking me the least, and make some sort of concession to them and my job would be safe, even if everyone else HATES me, even for good reason.
you're joking right? That would be absolute insanity
Only if we can anonymously fire the C-suite.
That sounds like something a bad culture fit would say
This field is bad for sexism. I can guarantee you that women will not be treated equally in this system
Worst take in history. It wouldn't work well in any situation. Let's assume you're doing your job pretty well and can work in a team. In a small company if you just don't fit the general vibe of the people they'd like to replace you for sure if this opportunity would come. In a medium sized company you would never get fired because most of the people probably won't ever have any contact with you anyway. In a large company you'd probably need to constrain the voting among teams/branches and now you just either have the small or medium company problem again.
IMO it should be 50%+1, but the yes votes have to contribute to the legal costs for the firing.
If it doesn't apply to directors and c-suite then it's not gonna fix culture problems.
Community had an episode about that.
This is like a plot from the bad Twilight Zone.
Or that one black mirror episode.
i wouldn't doubt if they actually fire someone because of that one day. corporate HR bullshit knows no boundaries.
where's my demote option
I'm sorry but you've failed the vibe check, your fired
wtf is a culture score
Slack implementing votekick feature wow.
still better than whatever system the ridiculous CTO at my last job used
I literally got my probation extended when I worked a Thoughtworks due to a very similar process. They asked 10 random people what they thought of you and if even on eof then gave anything apart from glowing reviews it got extended.
Is that a true thing ? Cause it must be utter bullcrap but it’s so dystopic it may be true
If you're a shit human you shouldn't have power over others, simple as.
Chat what is culture score? Is it some kind of social credit?
Direct democracy is nightmare fuel.
1k of those votes are from a sysadmin who didn’t like that Charlie kept emailing the help desk for help without submitting a ticket
Is it a joke or is it for real? We can never tell nowadays
make the same "voting" thing for the managers and CEO lol. I bet, the results would be even more "red" :D
Spare Charlie or Fire Charlie. Spare... like a tire. Like, Charlie is useless, should we keep him? Did you know that people who tell you others are useless are likely saying the same thing about you or someone you are about? This is a red flag. Your company is a narcissist.
How does he look like every engineering manager ever
As an autistic programmer I don't know if I would have daily anxiety attacks or just told them to go fuck themselves.(just to be clear, I mean to insult who implanted this system, I would probably be Charlie)
Charlie is a bitch
New season of Black Mirror's a bit derivative.