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I had the opposite experience. I don't have Asperger's or ADD, but I'm shy and struggle with eye contact and small talk. I interviewed at about ten startups, an

• stared 7y ago
  To be fair, I don't think that its only big companies that discriminate (e.g. too many are agist, classist, or have a bias against parents). Though, small companies vary. And even if one is biased one way, it's likely that there are some (as in "any") that are not. For social awkwardness - there are many kinds of that. For some corporate interview process may be not an issue. For others, a road blocker.
• Leherenn 7y ago
  I don't really understand this dismissing about "culture fit". You describe it yourself as a frat house, which, I assume from the rest of your post, is not what you want. Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired, so it makes sense to find someone who would fit in the mold, even if less experienced/skillful.
  • icotyl 7y ago
    Some had frat house vibes, some didn't. In any case, I think I'm pleasant and easy-going at work, and I do a good job, which makes other peoples' job easier. If someone would become "miserable" because I was hired... well, OK, but that might say more about their personality than mine.
    • com 7y ago
      Yes, absolutely it says more about their limitations or concerns than it does about your own! Unfortunately a mismatch in expectations is probably a reasonable (but not good!) reason not to hire. The hiring party gets to choose, and if their choices are for what they think are local maxima that you don’t fit, they get to own the consequences of not hiring you.
  • romwell 7y ago
    >I don't really understand this dismissing about "culture fit" You should understand that what you wrote sounds like discrimination by age (and sex, "frat" means male), which is illegal - and for good reasons. EDIT: specifically, the only way a 35-year-old is not a "culture fit" in "a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues" is if that company is discriminating by age. I don't have better words to explain that being 20 is not "culture".
    • Smithalicious 7y ago
      Is it? It's discrimination by things that correlate with age, sure, but many things do.
      • romwell 7y ago
        A rose by any other name is still a rose. "I don't discriminate by age, only by gray hair!" "I don't discriminate by sex, it's just that we have a no-birthing-kids culture!" Um, no.
      • x220 7y ago
        What if instead of discriminating by race, you don't hire people who live in mostly-black neighborhoods?
        • pluma 7y ago
          Codes of law aren't software. It's not a loophole, it's just an overly naive interpretation of what the law says based on your layperson understanding and applying programmer logic to non-software. If you explicitly don't accept applicants only from select neightborhoods that all just "happen to" be almost all-black, you're still discriminating by race and it's still obvious and obviously illegal. You'll just waste more of everyone's time in court. Just look at sovereign citizens and their inane shenanigans like "I'm not driving, I'm traveling by car and therefore don't need a driver's license and can ignore speed limits".
          • 7y ago
  • dominicr 7y ago
    I think the point is that companies shouldn't be frat houses full of brogrammers. If you want to hang out with your friends and wrestle to decide coding patterns, then that's all well and good. But the second that it becomes a company that employs people it should be more mature, equal and accepting. Work is indeed not always only about output and skills, it's also about respecting each other and collaborating with different people and their opinions & experience to produce the best outcome. Anecdotally, I have worked at a company whose unofficial hiring mantra was "hire people you'd go drinking with". It did not go well! Luckily some adults got hired and the company started functioning better.
    • PeterStuer 7y ago
      If you don't mind a sidequestion: I have worked with and met with probably close to 100 start/scale-up companies in the software domain. I have not yet met a 'brogammer' shop. Some hipster dens, and yes, when the founder is a twenty something you will be hard pressed to find anyone over 30. So is this 'brogrammer frathouse' a regional thing? Or is it maybe a B2C thing as I mostly work with B2B companies?
      • dominicr 7y ago
        I'm no expert and I've mostly been in Europe with marginal time in the US, so I don't know the frequency of occurrence. I think what's slightly more common is homogenous teams within companies that form an overwhelming culture, rather than entire company cultures. Teams do form their own ways of working and their own cultures, and this is fine: it's human and it can be positive. Healthy teams adapt to new members and vice versa. But I have occasionally seen teams develop an impenetrable culture and reject anyone that wasn't a perfect fit for their existing culture. They also tend to reject any company-wide initiatives for change & improvement, not even engaging with the process or contributing to the discussion. Typically the way to solve such a team is to rebuild it by removing at least half of the members, after which everyone usually goes back to working normally.
        • PeterStuer 7y ago
  • flukus 7y ago
    > especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues So you'd discriminate against introverts because the team are awful at socializing? Apart from how sad that sounds and how awful it is for people (you're whole life has single point of failure), it also sounds very self defeating. > Work is not always only about output and skills Treating it that way is basically the foundation of what's considered professional behavior. I hate when that gets taken too far, but the core idea is good.
    • TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > So you'd discriminate against introverts because the team are awful at socializing? Aren't almost all companies? > Apart from how sad that sounds and how awful it is for people (you're whole life has single point of failure) It's not as much of a choice. Unless you've built and are above average good at maintaining a social network prior to work, workplace tends to become the primary part of the social life. It's a trend in the west.
    • x220 7y ago
      >you're whole life has single point of failure wontfix, working as intended. The startup wants you dependent on them for everything and to spend nearly all your waking hours inside their office so they can coerce your loyalty.
      • otakucode 7y ago
        I don't know if it's to coerce loyalty. I would presume that the main motivation is that they know that you are what generates profit. So if they can exploit you as a profit-generating resource, and get away with it, they will do so. This isn't novel. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was common for entire families, children included, to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, and barely earn enough to survive. That was not done out of economic necessity. When the government stepped in and required companies to pay 1 person enough to raise a family for 40 hours of work in a week, that essentially amounted to requiring them to give a greater than 960% wage increase. (Going from getting 384hr of work out of a family of 4 in a week to getting 40hrs of work from that same family, just to keep that family at the same subsistence level would require paying 960% more for that 40 hours.) And they survived. In fact, they thrived, as did all of society when they were forced to do that. But, the type of people who created that situation in the first place are still being born. They're still running companies. And they will still attempt to wring every valuable moment out of the lives of human beings to take for themselves. If we let them.
  • Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
    The way I like to re-frame it is that picking someone to be on your team — to join your company — is very much like picking a housemate to live in your personal space. It’s a huge risk for the person or company hiring, so of course they’re going to trust their gut feeling. If you had to pick a housemate, how impartial or emotionless would you be, honestly? (not referring to any particular ‘you’ in this conversation — it’s just the hypothetical question I’d ask to demonstrate the re-framing).
    • BeetleB 7y ago
      >It’s a huge risk for the person or company hiring, so of course they’re going to trust their gut feeling. What makes SW so special? This is as true for most small businesses that are just starting out (e.g. real estate work, etc). Yet I do not see an emphasis on culture fit there. They are very picky and will filter for one/two traits, but they're clear and up front about those traits. They don't not hire people because the person had differing hobbies, etc. Partners, maybe - but not employees.
  • mattlutze 7y ago
    The demographics of start-up founders is generally biased toward young, affluent members of a community's ethnic majority. If you want to work for one of these companies, and "cultural fit" is high on the selection criteria, most start-ups will end up being staffed or run by the same sorts of people. Working with diverse people that are interested in things that you're not is not predetermined to actually be a miserable experience. But it does require that you're open to integrating yourself with many other folks / cultures / etc.
  • kls 7y ago
    As a person who was a young developer in the .com boom and a middle-age programmer now, I think youth puts too much focus on this and lack experience in this area. I think there is a general opinion that the old guys will ruin everything and serious up the environment. When my experience has been the exact opposite, the old guys usually bring in some good practices the young guys find are good ideas but they really don't care about the culture or changing it. At my age now, I enjoy the antics and find them amusing, joke with my younger colleges and tend to get along well with them. I just don't hang at the bar with them until 3 in the morning. I think a lot of younger programmers would be surprised at how much older developers don't infringe on their culture, they may not be an active participant in all circumstances of said culture but a lot of them, lived it, and have a boys will be boys attitude about it. If anything I would say that many older programmers are a passive cultural fit for a youth oriented company.
    • tsss 7y ago
      To them not participating is the same as refusal. I have also been rejected from a startup like this for not being "enthusiastic" enough.
      • kls 7y ago
        If that is the case then consider rephrasing it in your mind from rejected to spared as that is the way I would see it, if they really are that focused on insignificant details, then the company as a whole is going to chase rabbits. That does not mean they won't be successful but they have already indicated to you that they are not focused on the important details, which is going to make the battle for success that much more difficult. I guess it would bother me more if we competed in a constrained market but given that development talent, has historically been, is currently and will be in the future a under-supplied market. I tend to look at these entities as just shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to the competition for talent. They are doing more harm to themselves than to the prospects of the rejected candidate.
    • kitsunesoba 7y ago
      Indeed it is not true that all older engineers will cause this culture clash, but when it happens it’s dramatic and I think that’s what prompts cautiousness when hiring these individuals. It’s an anecdote so take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve had an experience like this with at least a couple of former colleagues on the higher end of the team’s age distribution — they were great people, but none of the younger team members knew how to relate with them which made day to day interactions a lot more awkward than they would have been otherwise. Of course, it could be argued that the awkwardness could’ve been avoided had the company started off with a wider age range, but then you run into the issue of attracting older candidates, which can be difficult given the volatility and reduced concrete compensation associated with early stage startups.
  • traderjane 7y ago
    If it’s a frathouse with 20 somethings who don’t have enough time except with each other, how does sexuality come into play? Not at all?
  • jimbokun 7y ago
    "Work is not always only about output and skills, especially in a small company run by 20-something whose only social life is their colleagues. It says nothing about your skills, just that both sides would probably be miserable in case you were hired, so it makes sense to find someone who would fit in the mold, even if less experienced/skillful." Right, so better not hire any married people, older people, people of the opposite gender of the founders, people of the wrong political party, people of the wrong religious persuasion, the wrong class, or any other characteristics that risk interrupting the frat party...I mean "work environment".
    • throwawy12345 7y ago
      Sure
• mnsc 7y ago
  > I had the opposite experience. I don't have Asperger's or ADD (...) So you had experience that's not related to interviewing with Asperger's or ADD. That's cool too.
  • icotyl 7y ago
    I can certainly relate to coming off as weird or socially awkward or unintentionally rude, and it has affected my job interview performance. People diagnosed with ADD/Asperger's don't really have a monopoly on that.
    • C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Plenty of neurodiverse people don't have a formal diagnosis BTW
    • x220 7y ago
      Autistic people are not awkward in the way that you are awkward, unless you're an undiagnosed autistic.
      • mnsc 7y ago
        This was what I meant although my comment was socially awkward! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  • mda 7y ago
    This was a totally unnecessary comment.
• matwood 7y ago
  > I began to suspect it was because of "culture fit" -- will this 35 year old introvert fit in at our frat house/office? The job does not have to be a frat house office in order for a candidate to fail the culture fit. Unfortunately many programmers think programming is 100% writing code, when often times it is more about communication and relationships. If you were missing a certain technical skill what would you do? Now apply that same mindset to being a little less socially awkward. No one is saying you have to learn to be Dale Carnegie himself, but even just a small amount of people skills goes a long way.
  • electrograv 7y ago
    But let’s imagine for the moment a candidate was actually rejected for being “too introverted”, as an example for the sake of this argument. Disclaimer: I’ve not seen anyone rejected for this reason explicitly, but I have heard an instance of a self-identifying extrovert reporting “organizational culture problems” to upper management which when asked for details became “while there was no bad or unwelcoming behavior of any kind (not even indirectly), the majority of engineers are too introverted and that makes me uncomfortable”. In such a case, how is “too introverted” as a reason for rejection or even as a negative cultural connotation not overt discrimination to exclude neurodiversity? I’d even be willing to concede that such personality-based discrimination may need to be made for customer-facing roles or roles if being charming or extroverted is explicitly part of the job description. But other than that, it seems odd to reject an engineering candidate for reasons like this.