Hi folks đ
Lots of great feedback so far on everyoneâs annual review process so Iâm glad to see things arenât as dire as I imagined. A lot of companies Iâve heard from are doing great by their employees with thorough reviews with ample feedback throughout the year. Great work!
Thereâs one area that I think we could all use some improvement on and itâs hiring. Modern-day hiring practices are broken and I am convinced that will be one of the big things we look back on someday and scratch our heads as to how we got it so wrong. Are you proud of how you hire at your company? Let me know!
On culture fit
A question was asked during a recent panel on Clubhouse about assessing culture fit. What was once an innocuous term for âpeople who arenât terrible human beingsâ has quickly become a trigger for exclusivity, gate-keeping, and homogeneity. Here are my thoughts on how things got out of hand with this hiring practice.
The benefits of finding a cultural fit
I can understand where culture fit is seen as a necessary tactic at some places. At small startups, companies are looking for chemistry between the founders and these early-stage employees. I get it; all of you are going to spend a lot of time together taking a big bet that the thing you are building is going to change the world. I was the first employee at a startup and I spent many nights working with the founders until 4am and it all started with a poker game.
For these early companies, youâre looking for employees to define your culture which is largely based on the principles that the founders already hold dear. So if you, as founders, have a semblance of culture, youâre looking to ensure the keys to your initial success stay intact when expanding to hired employees.
On the surface, this makes sense. Many years later Iâm looking back on some of these interviews with these founders and Iâm left wondering if the toxic elements germinate even at the smallest of startups.
A culture of homogeneity
I remember a very peculiar interview I had with an early-stage company. We did quite a few technical rounds followed by a round of beers at a local bar. I knew it was about getting to know the founders but in retrospect, it was a sign of being part of the group.
Was I a techie? Did I wear the right hoodies and jeans? Did I know how to hold down a beer (or five) and still gun sling code like a pro? Was I willing to do whatever it took to get the job done in a work-hard-play-hard atmosphere?
This is where the original idea of finding chemistry ballooned into a flawed practice I see at many companies now, both large and small.
Why I donât recommend culture fit interviews
My answer, by the way, on the panel was to completely do away with culture fit interviews. I think they are a stain on the tech industry that we will look back on in 5-10 years as a âwhat were we thinking?â kind of clarity. Culture fit interviews promote the opposite of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) - Homogeneity, Inequity, and Exclusion (HIE).
Culture fit is a tactic to find a homogenous group of people. Youâre literally trying to determine if people are like you. The common thought here is âcan I see myself having a beer with this person after work?â So ask yourself:
Why do we need to have beers? Why not tea?
Why do we need to hang out after work? Isnât a coworker relationship during normal hours enough?
Why do we need to be out somewhere together? Does that diminish the contributions of my remote colleagues?
Diversity is about different perspectives from different backgrounds. And itâs not just about demographics like race and socioeconomic background. The kinds of companies youâve worked for, whether big or small, all bring new perspectives about how to run and scale an organization. The kinds of jobs your team has had in the past contribute as well: âpurebredâ software engineers from CS schools offer a completely different window into building software than folks who never went to college and spent the last 5 years working in retail who just recently transitioned into a software job.
Culture fit is inherently inequitable because it is a subjective evaluation with an unspoken set of rules. There is no way to get a correct answer to a culture-fit interview. That is because every company has a different way to âgradeâ that question which makes it impossible to provide a way to improve or level the playing field for those that need a boost to balance their technical capabilities and job qualifications.
Meanwhile, equity is directly aligned with providing a boost for those who have been systematically left out of the conversation. If youâre used to talking to white MIT grads from Boston or Silicon Valley then you need to explicitly devote more time and attention to the overlooked BIPOC candidates without the same signaling credentials. Youâre trying to explicitly create room and opportunity for those that are often overlooked. If they already arenât part of the in-group, how do you expect to help them with an in-group culture fit question about grinding exams back at Stanford before a kegger?
Finally, culture fit is exclusive because those unwritten rules I spoke of earlier are designed to weed out people who donât fit the mold of the prototypical engineer or any other kind of employee youâre used to seeing. The question is all about showing signals that youâre part of the group.
Even without a culture fit question, people will assess culture on first impressions. Have you ever grimaced at an engineer coming into an interview in a suit? Made a snap judgment that the person might be too uptight or corporate? Weâve all subjected others to unfair biases and it doesnât make things better to put someone through an entire interview centered around this concept.
Inclusive interviews are about bringing everyone into the conversation without adding more reasons to deny someone a seat at the table. Itâs about the opportunity for people in a field that is dominated by white males and has been this way for decades. It is our responsibility and duty to represent and include all kinds of people in a way that better reflects the diversity of the people in our nation and in our world.
DEI takes work. DEI is a necessary evolution of job opportunities. And one way we can move in the right direction is to kill the culture fit interview.
New things Iâve read recently
For Beginners:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/02/building-user-trust-in-ux-design/ - Building trust is a basic thing we should all be working on.
For Seasoned Pros:
https://cgroom.medium.com/take-home-coding-assignments-are-a-waste-of-time-8da74085749e - The title is actually bad and contradictory; he says coding assignments work in very specific conditions. We use a takehome assignment on my teams and we adhere to all of his suggestions for takehome assignments to be effective. And THAT is what I would want you to focus on when reading this article.
For Experts:
https://medium.com/product-at-shopify/how-to-figure-out-if-your-product-actually-solves-problems-885f242ac36 - More people could heed the advice to check risky assumptions and return to first principles when things aren't working out with product-market fit.
For Managers & Leaders:
https://medium.com/@meetfelipe/measure-what-really-matters-2de3569e55ec - I largely agree with what is considered good, bad, and ugly with regards to OKRs. Definitely worth the read and clarified a few things for me from the book.
đ Thatâs all folks đ
Aaaand weâre done with issue 128 of the User Interfacing Newsletter.
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Cheers,
Adam