I'm actually quite surprised how offended some people are getting over this. It seems like a pretty reasonable article trying to bring awareness to how some of the things we laud thoughtlessly can be used as tools against us or others and actually not further our ideals. I had assumed HN was more open minded and deep enough to accept a critique and learn from it. Instead I see it getting flagged, and people dismissing it and being offended.
For a culture that's supposed to love disruption, have anarchistic tendencies and be counter culture, it seems everyone's pretty easy to hurt, easily offended, a little close minded, and not at all open to anything questioning them.
A little disappointed in the HN culture. We should always be reevaulutating and in a state on constant flux. Status Quo is death because then we become the old and some new group who isn't us will out innovate, out manoeuvre us. Being status quo by definition means you aren't disrupting or innovating any more. Why should we only focus on technology and not culture? It seems a big weakness.
Though these generalizations are certainly dripping with bitterness, I have definitely seen bits and pieces of these phenomena in the startups I've worked at and the startups I've been around/interacted with through my work.
I've definitely seen cases where lack of defined roles leads to not a flat culture but in fact a culture where unspoken dynamics rule. I've seen "cultural fit" used to basically exclude a few introverts who aren't able to hit it off on a personal level with the founders (in this case, this meant liking to party and drink and talk superficially), which meant passing over some extraordinarily brilliant people. I've seen a lack of meetings lead not to collaboration, but to siloing of different activities. This is often not necessarily intentional, and the founders actually mean well, but it happens more often than you think.
This reads like someone didn't get the offer they wanted, and the reason given was that they were not a good fit for the company's culture.
First, if this was the motivation for this post then I'd recommend you take a deep breath and relax. Its not about you, its about them. And trust me when I say if someone doesn't hire you because they don't think you would fit into their culture, thank them. Nothing is worse for your own self esteem and sanity than trying to get stuff done in a company trying to reject you culturally.
Second, understand that culture rejections are like date rejections, sometimes its the real reason, sometimes its a more polite way of saying 'no thank you' but in either case move on.
That said, you spend a lot of time at the office, and you interact with these people in a day to day way, startups are by their nature small and like families small issues can be big problems (do you squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom or the middle?). Unlike families, you get the opportunity to pick a new startup when one doesn't fit. Avail yourself of that opportunity.
I would be interested in what gave you the impression I was being
dismissive, I was shooting for compassionate.
Tell you what, now that I have a bit of time, allow me to share with
you my reasoning on why I responded the way I did, and perhaps you can
share what you got out of our author's post.
I have always held that 'snark' is a unit of emotional hurt, and this
particular posting appeared to be quite snarky. When I read
provocative prose with words like 'lies' and 'nuevo-social' and '1%
poster children' I see snark. And in this case 'I got no pony!'[1] level
of snark. Thus I read the posting with the impression that the author
had suffered a strong emotional blow and was venting. With that much
hurt (perceived) I gave them slack for their otherwise very sloppy
reasoning.
Our author asserts, "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." which is a highly arguable statement. I
would posit that culture is about creating a structure to both set
expectations and define success in an environment. Nothing about power
over you or creating "in" or "out" groups or wealth or any of the
things our author asserts. Our author further asserts that "Culture
is exceedingly difficult to talk about honestly." which is also
not true, they are attempting to be "honest" here in spite of their
own declaration.
As the topical 'setup' for what is an emotional rant, the entire
position statement in the first five paragraphs says exactly one thing
"I (the author) am mad that I am unable to understand (or possibly to
accept) what people are asking of me with regards to my behavior
around others."
What follows then are a series of "sound bytes" pulled out as
sub-heads with the author's flawed understanding of what they mean.
The author has gone out of their way at times to attribute a level of
deceit and malice to others that borders on paranoid but let's stick
with what they wrote and go over it shall we?
On the sound bite "We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit"
the author claims the intent is " ... We have implemented a loosely
coordinated social policy to ensure homogeneity in our workforce. We
are able to reject qualified, diverse candidates on the grounds that
they aren't a culture fit. while not having to examine what that
means ..."
That reads very much like they (or someone they knew) considered
themselves "qualified" and yet their application for employment
was "rejected as a poor cultural fit." It seems they have taken
the path that it is simpler to blame this on some malicious prep
school like club when, on closer inspection it never is. The fact is
that startups are desperate for qualified talent, that is what makes
them go, however if the way in which a candidate comports themselves
suggests they will cause friction with people who are already hired
then, even if they are qualified, hiring them would be a bad decision
if it increased problems at work.
Let's used a contrived example, lets say that three guys decide to
start a company and they have always had a rich tradition of
commenting their code. In fact they often exchange ideas in comments
as they check things into a source repository. They find that this
transparency in the thought process allows them to evolve the code
based faster in a compatible way. Now, when interviewing to employee
#1 (or #10 doesn't really matter) they ask about writing comments in
code and the candidate replies : "Writing comments in code
just slows me down, anyone to stupid to not be able to see what the
code does shouldn't be reading my code." They may stop right there and
say, "Thanks, but your not a cultural fit for company."
Nothing about power, nothing about secret societies, just a knowledge
that working with this candidate won't "flow" because they depend on
that dialog in comments and this candidate is unwilling to write
comments. It's the founder's company, and this is a classic case of
find people who are "a cultural fit."
Sound byte number two is "Meetings are evil and we have them as little
as possible." which our author conveniently translates to "We have a
collective post-traumatic stress reaction to previous workplaces that
had hostile, unnecessary, unproductive and authoritarian meetings."
One asks (and I did) "Where did that come from?" And I answered myself
with "I wonder if this person doesn't have any tools for keeping in touch
with what is going on, and so a lack of meetings threatens them."
Because keeping in touch as a developer is as straight forward as
reading the commit log and talking to people. Now from a strategy,
vision, mission perspective? Sure you want someone to let you know
where you are heading, but most engineers hate a weekly status
meetings that don't provide any value. So it seems our author has
again projected their own mis-understanding into some malicious
deceit.
One which stuck right out was the response to "We don't have a
vacation policy." The authors interpretation of this is "We fool
ourselves into thinking we have a better work/life balance when really
people take even less vacation than they would when they had a
vacation policy."
It would have helped had the author suggested what they interpret that
to imply (wow that is a lot of indefinits!) but they chose not to so
we have to speculate. Immature individuals will interpret a 'no
vacation policy' to mean they can take vacation whenever, and for as
long as, they want. A more reasoned interpretation is that folks can
count on taking some time off to rest and recover once their product
ships. A 'no explicit policy' does not mean that folks don't care
how much you produce, rather it has always meant that you take time
off to keep your productivity high when you are at work. Some people
cannot handle that level of responsibility, either through lack of
maturity or through mixed expectations. It isn't the culture that is
evil though. Its like teachers who don't grade the homework, they
still expect you to do it so that you have satisfied yourself that
you understand the material. It doesn't mean "woo hoo we don't have to
do the homework!"
Every single 'culture' point our author attacks they do so in a way
the imputes some amazing ill will on the person espousing the point.
The most charitable interpretation I could come up with was that this
person was feeling hurt, I accept that it is possible they are simply
quite immature, or unable to internalize the concept of a culture
model based on peer respect rather than explicit rules. I don't know
if they read HN but on the off chance they did, I was trying to
express, compassionately, that people aren't trying to deceive you
with this discussion of culture, they are trying to communicate. Once
you understand what they are saying you will understand better whether
or not you want to work with them. I guess I failed at that.
There is much that I disagree with in this comment. And that's ok! Disagreement about this sort of thing is good! It's how we can have real discussions about what works and what doesn't about the cultures we create. I'm going to attempt to respond in depth in a followup comment but I wanted to go ahead and start by saying this this comment is FAR FAR better than your first because it actually addresses the issues that Shanley brought up.
In your original comment you ascribed motivations that are simply not true. Rather than discussing the merits of her essay you simply assumed that she didn't get a job so her thoughts could be dismissed without serious engagement. This was pretty patronizing. But anyways thanks for following up with a much more substantive explanation of your thoughts. I will attempt to do the same.
Let's say a couple of guys start a company to make it easy for people to send money back and forth to each other over email. They, like all startups, are desperate for talent so they recruit like mad. But it's important to them not only to get folks with engineering chops, but that they get folks who will fit in with their culture. In fact, one time they reject someone because he said that he liked to play hoops and they thought that was a funny way to say basketball.[1]
Fast forward to another tech boom. We've got another company, vaguely similar to the first, but this time they want to make it easier for websites to accept credit card based payments. They also recruit like mad and care a lot about culture. In fact they have something called a Sunday Test: "if this person were alone in the office on a Sunday would that make you more likely to come in and want to work with them?" It's a bit less clear what that means in this case, but it certainly sounds like they are optimizing for homogeneity.[2]
Those two stories are both about culture. They're both about companies working hard to define their own internal culture in a way that they think will make them more successful. Further I think that, in many ways, that they are right about this guess! Monocultures are very very useful in small early stage startups!
But aren't the effects of this kind of fucked up? Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the fact that not making a job offer to a guy because he used the word "hoops" is a little weird? And this doesn't even get into related issues of race or gender or class backgrounds.
Much of Shanley's post is about this sort of thing. She's not saying that meetings are great, or flat hierarchies are bad or that free lunches are bullshit. But she is saying that these things aren't 100% good. They come with some significant downsides that are rarely acknowledge inside of the "everything we do is awesome" startup bubble.
I don't think she is imputing ill will (well mostly, she is a bit). Rather she's just trying to throw some water in the face of a very self satisfied startup culture. She's saying "look around you guys! Some of these values that you think are 100% awesome have some big downsides!" And I think that is very laudable.
Apparently some of her rhetoric was a bit off the mark as some people are dismissing her post as bitter. That's too bad, because I think that she brings up some very real and very important issues.
Ok, well I think I see where we part ways, lets see if I can communicate it.
I'd like to preface this discussion with a simple question, "Have you
experienced working a company where you did not fit with the culture?"
I think it is important to consider that question in the context of
discussing culture because it is informs on the downside, or the
negatives associated with a poor fit. From reading your response, and
shanley's post, I do not see that experience in your writing.
Before getting to your specific argument, its important to know if you
agree, or at least acknowledge, that a cultural misfit can be very
impactful on how somone experiences a situation. The sexism of a
'brogrammer' culture, casual racism of a supremicist culture, or even
the passivity of a conformance culture. So let us agree on what we
mean when we say what is 'culture' and what is 'not culture.'
When I say that our company has a 'we have a culture', I mean it to encompass
those "principles we value", the "expectations we put on behavior", and
the "judgments we apply to our interactions". In its simplest form it
defines the kinds of qualities and behaviors we admire in our co-workers
and those qualities and behaviors we dislike. I would further
stipulate that for any group of people who spend time together, the
degree with which those values and judgments align directly
correlates with the 'pleasure' of spending time together.
I think if you can't understand these claims about what I mean when I
talk about culture, then its safe to say we'll not make a lot of
progress :-)
So lets look at your argument.
You use as your first example, Max Levchin discussing the importance
of a consistent culture at PayPal in the early days, and their
decision not to hire someone because they called the game of
basketball 'hoops'. And you agree with Max's claim that a small group
of people that share a very similar culture are more productive. Then
you add this: "But aren't the effects of this kind of fucked up?
Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the fact that not making a job offer
to a guy because he used the word 'hoops' is a little weird?"
What Max says in this is that the general consensus on the existing
team is that sports are a waste of time. I know a number of engineers
who hold that view, they are amazed you can earn 9 figure incomes by
throwing a ball around. Max seems to recognize that if this candidate came in
and talked about "march madness" (the NCAA Tournament) they might be
chided or kidded for their enthusiasm, snarky comments would be made
about going to 'waste their time bouncing a ball while the team gets
the product done' or something equally lame. Max was protecting this
candidate and protecting the team at the same time. People can be very
passionate about sports teams, and not respecting their team, or their
sport, often gets translated into not respecting them. That is
corrosive.
Your second example came from a recent article that was shared on HN
where the folks at Stripe talked about the 'Sunday Test' question.
That isn't a candidate question, that is an interviewer question. The
interviewer asks themselves, "Is this candidate so awesome that if
they felt they needed to be here Sunday to get what they were doing
done, would I want to come in here and help them get it done?"
I don't know if you read it that way, but it is a 'gut check' on the
part of the interviewer to see if they feel the kind of chemistry (or
cultural fit) with this person that would inspire them. Given the
challenge of finding people, and the down side of picking poorly, it's
a way to try to get around how much you might "like" their
presentation to see how you really feel. That level of self awareness
doesn't come naturally to people, so tools like this help.
So I think you answered your question, the effect is not fucked up, the
effect is that the team doesn't get distracted and this possible
future employee doesn't feel alienated. Paypal avoided hiring people
who would feel bad at work, Stripe gave their interviewers a way to
ask themselves "how do you really feel about hiring this person."
And yes, its about culture, but it isn't about lying, its about
honesty and knowing how the current team values things.
You added, "Much of Shanley's post is about this sort of thing. She's
not saying that meetings are great, or flat hierarchies are bad or
that free lunches are bullshit. But she is saying that these things
aren't 100% good. They come with some significant downsides that are
rarely acknowledge inside of the 'everything we do is awesome' startup
bubble."
And this is where I think we read different articles :-) Shanley was
calling out what she perceived to be lies. She didn't call them "often
misinterpreted statements" or "meaning perhaps not what you think they
mean". She said, "This is not a critique of the practices themselves,
which often contribute value to an organization. This is to show a
contrast between the much deeper, systemic cultural problems that are
rampant in our startups and the materialistic trappings that can
disguise them." and then goes on to assert that each sound bite is
code for some rampant abuse of trust or an attempt at deception.
Shanley argument fails the test of truth, which is one way to analyze
her rhetoric. She asserts time and again with the lead "What your
culture might actually be saying is ..." So follow that lead. Now take
any one of her sound bites and say "Ok we stipulate this is the actual
culture." Now does it pass the sniff test? Does it even make sense?
Start with #1: We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit
Stipulate her assertion: We reject qualified candidates based on
superficial and unimportant reasons.
Now go find a startup where this assertion holds and the startup has
made it through seed funding much less a series A.
#2: Meetings are evil
Stipulate: We avoid projects that require strict coordination across
the company so that we don't have to have meetings.
Find a company that does that.
#3: We have people responsible for making work fun.
Stipulate: A mostly female team exists that gets the mostly male
workforce to stay late.
Etc, etc. They all fall down. Startups don't do those things, they
can't afford to.
There is nothing in her article that supports any of her assertions,
even anecdotes, its all snark as far as I can see, and by now I think
I've read it four or five times. She is either very inexperienced,
very hurt, or both, but I don't think she has surfaced any deep cover
up or deception.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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?
You didn't answer my question :-) That's okay of course. When I read her thesis it struck me as so patently false, I found myself asking the question "What sort of event set this off?" not "Are there insights here I should consider?"
A neighbor of mine had his home seized by the bank, it was underwater, and they weren't willing to negotiate the terms of the loan. He posted a piece that was not a whole lot different than shaney's except that he asserted that Banks were an immoral and illegal institution run by the 1% to fleece the rest of us of our money, he made several "points" about how what they said they were doing one thing, when the reality was that those activities were just a cover for taking more of your money. He uniformly ignored any market impact banks had and screamed in rage at their inhumanity.
He wasn't successfully making any sort of argument that banks have no reason to exist other than to fleece us. Nor did he develop any insights about how banks might be improved, or what we could use to replace them. He was angry, and hurt, and sad, and bitter. Banks, and the shadowy 'them' that run them, became the focus of his anger.
I get it that you and harryh saw a deeper question about culture in the article than I did. I just saw what looked, in form at least, venting and anger. Just like my neighbor's bank screed.
I'll weigh in, I had no problem with her thesis. What about it did you have a problem with?
As for her questions, they weren't a blanket judgement, more sometimes this is how far wrong what you say with good intention can go. It's a warning. And I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to back each up with at least one example which is all that's needed to demonstrate we need to be more careful and more aware of our internal company culture.
> So I think you answered your question, the effect is not fucked up, the effect is that the team doesn't get
> distracted and this possible future employee doesn't feel alienated. Paypal avoided hiring people who would
> feel bad at work, Stripe gave their interviewers a way to ask themselves "how do you really feel about hiring
> this person."
I agree that the effect is that the team doesn't get distracted.
I agree that the effect is that the employee doesn't feel alienated.
But is that enough?
There's a lot of casual sexism / brogrammer culture in our industry. Is a company that excludes women because it makes sure the team doesn't get distracted OK? Is a company that thinks "we can't hire her because she'd feel alienated if she was here" OK? A lot of the time I think that the "culture" fit moniker is used to systematically enforce a monoculture of young, white (or sometimes asian), privileged men.
And this can lead to less distracted, more focused, more successful team (especially in the short term)!
But is that ok? Maybe? If that's absolutely the only way to maintain team cohesion, but I don't think that's at all obvious.
> Stipulate her assertion: We reject qualified candidates based on superficial and unimportant reasons.
Go ask a random person on the street if rejecting a job applicant because they said the word "hoops" is a superficial or unimportant reason. 99 times out of 100 they'll say yes.
> Stipulate: We avoid projects that require strict coordination across the company so that we don't have to have meetings.
I, in fact, think this is a big problem in our industry. Talk to any company as they move up to ~100 people. Nearly all of them have huge communication challenges that they didn't have before and this directly impacts their ability to execute on larger scale work.
> Stipulate: A mostly female team exists that gets the mostly male workforce to stay late.
This also happens all the time. I bet eng teams at startups are 90% male. Then take a look at who the office managers, or recruiters, or HR, or assistents. Largely female.
> I don't think she has surfaced any deep cover up or deception.
She's not talking about a cover up. She's not talking about a bunch of evil startup managers sitting in a room thinking about how they can deceive their staff. It doesn't work that way. She's talking about the lies we all tell each other, and how those lies can have negative consequences.
"> Stipulate her assertion: We reject qualified candidates based on superficial and unimportant reasons.
Go ask a random person on the street if rejecting a job applicant because they said the word "hoops" is a superficial or unimportant reason. 99 times out of 100 they'll say yes."
Isn't that leaving off a bit of context? Ask them if "Hiring someone who plays hoops on to a team that thinks basketball is a stupid waste of time and recently campaigned against tax payer funding of a local venue for an NBA team." is a smart idea.
You don't walk into a room full of people playing Magic the Gathering and tell them you need three more for a bridge game do you? It's a group of Magic players, not Bridge players.
But the real point is that not being asked to join a community you won't fit in with is a good thing for you and for the community, and it says nothing about your "value" or the communities "value." All it says is that you don't fit there. Further, that "you" the random person, aren't a cultural fit for a group doesn't make that group evil, deceitful, or even wrong.
I understand the point you are making, I don't agree with it. I think 'culture' is a natural outgrowth of 'group' and is not only a reasonable discriminator for choosing to add someone too a group, but also for choosing not to join or to leave a group. That said, I do agree that there are unreasonable discrimination criteria, they are codified by law.
"She's not talking about a cover up. She's not talking about a bunch of evil startup managers sitting in a room thinking about how they can deceive their staff. It doesn't work that way. She's talking about the lies we all tell each other, and how those lies can have negative consequences."
You seem to have a good grasp of what she is thinking which is great, I just don't think she wrote any of what you are asserting as her thoughts, are actually in the text I read.
Do you think we should be able to exclude gays in the military because of the negative effects on unit cohesion?
If not, then what's the difference between that and our industry, in many cases, systematically excluding certain groups because it negatively effects their internal culture?
> But the real point is that not being asked to join a community you won't fit in
> with is a good thing for you and for the community
Ya, kid. I know you've wanted to work at a top Silicon Valley startup your whole life...but you know...we just don't think you'd fit in here. Your vibe just isn't quite right in a way we can't even really explain. But you should thank us! You really wouldn't have liked it here anyways. We know better.
> That said, I do agree that there are unreasonable discrimination criteria,
Sigh. I don't think we've made much progress but that's okay.
I don't support discrimination. If you have been a victim of discrimination (I have) it sucks, and I feel badly for you.
There are thousands of companies, some work hard all day and night, some have more family values, some see computer code as art, some see it as a means to an end, some aspire to operate as smoothly as possible, some as quickly as possible. Those with corrosive or illegal cultures, fade away. Sometimes not as quickly as we would like but they don't survive. There are many different ports in the world as sailors might say.
I wasn't being dismissive of shanley's article, I felt badly for her as it seems like there is a lot of emotional hurt around this issue for her. You, harryh, are also pretty invested in this issue as well it seems. I hope that you find a company that is a great 'fit' for you and have a really great experience of a solid company culture.
> You don't walk into a room full of people playing Magic the Gathering and tell them you need three more for a bridge game do you? It's a group of Magic players, not Bridge players.
I very well might because people aren't one dimensional and an interest in one card game might indicate an interest in others.
> Isn't that leaving off a bit of context? Ask them if "Hiring someone who plays hoops on to a team that thinks basketball is a stupid waste of time and recently campaigned against tax payer funding of a local venue for an NBA team." is a smart idea.
If the team is a political action group, then ok, otherwise it has nothing to do with software.
> Isn't that leaving off a bit of context? Ask them if "Hiring someone who plays hoops on to a team that thinks basketball is a stupid waste of time and recently campaigned against tax payer funding of a local venue for an NBA team." is a smart idea.
There is a big difference between someone who plays some basket ball after work with some friends for their weekly exercise as opposed to what ever white male programmers are doing for sport to stay healthy (... nothing?) to pro sport NBA level players. This is a ridiculous argument.
I rock climb for my sport at work. No one else does. We haven't all gotten into huge arguments or ever been massively distracted by it. Some other people play badminton. Soem go to the gym. Some run. Some swim. Honestly, personal sport preference differences haven't destroyed our company opr even impacted it.
In fact I'm getting pretty tired of this defence of the thesis that "diversity is bad" because that's unproven and in fact I submit it's garbage. I'll posit diversity is actually good and makes things stronger.
But at this point with out either of us providing back up we're pretty much arguing for different world views and aren't going to get much further
The most bitter possible interpretations of these ideas, but still possible interpretations.
That said, the merging of work and hobby is at a very advanced state in SV, which is a good and a bad thing. It's not so odd that they should overlap policy-wise.
Blanket statements wouldn't be fair, but she's caveating it with "might" every paragraph. But I think these dysfunctional patterns are more the norm than the exception today.
While I'm sure these are completely valid truths in some startups, I can't help but feel that the author doesn't really know what it's like to be successful in that sort of environment. You can paint things a hundred different ways depending on your perspective, but if this sort of "culture" works for so many people and they're happy with it, I don't really see an issue. OP was simply not a good fit for the startup scene's culture, and that isn't a BS statement meant to bar out anyone who doesn't fit the mold.
Your response seems to suggest that the OP has not been successful and is no longer a member of the "startup scene". I don't see why you would assume any of that to be true or to be the motivation for this post.
I found it to be a useful reminder that practices I am often excited to see are not necessarily indicators of a healthy culture I would want to be a part of. I enjoy stoping for a minute to think "wait, could that apply to us?". I think it is important to consider if the culture behind a given practice is positive and empowering or how much it has shifted toward being dysfunctional or harmful.
For a culture that's supposed to love disruption, have anarchistic tendencies and be counter culture, it seems everyone's pretty easy to hurt, easily offended, a little close minded, and not at all open to anything questioning them.
A little disappointed in the HN culture. We should always be reevaulutating and in a state on constant flux. Status Quo is death because then we become the old and some new group who isn't us will out innovate, out manoeuvre us. Being status quo by definition means you aren't disrupting or innovating any more. Why should we only focus on technology and not culture? It seems a big weakness.