6 ms·

From the post: "the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job" - Max Levchin I know culture fit is critical but where is the

by mkeblx 14y ago

From the post: "the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job" - Max Levchin I know culture fit is critical but where is the line between between not a fit and just having a hobby not shared by the rest of the team?

alokv28 14y ago
It wasn't that he didn't get the job because he played basketball. It was that Max couldn't ever imagine himself or anyone else at PayPal referring to basketball as 'hoops' - this speaks to a greater cultural difference where this candidate might not be a great fit with the nerd / D&D culture that was pervasive in the company at the time.
DanBC 14y ago
I thought the context would make that quote sound better, but nope, it makes them sound even worse. > PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used the world “hoops.” Probably no one even knew how to play “hoops.” Basketball would be bad enough. But “hoops?” That guy clearly wouldn’t have fit in. He’d have had to explain to the team why he was going to go play hoops on a Thursday night. And no one would have understood him. > PayPal also had a hard time hiring women. An outsider might think that the PayPal guys bought into the stereotype that women don’t do CS. But that’s not true at all. The truth is that PayPal had trouble hiring women because PayPal was just a bunch of nerds! They never talked to women. So how were they supposed to interact with and hire them?
aristus 14y ago
Surprise surprise, the next paragraph: "PayPal also had a hard time hiring women." This kind of thinking is what Mitch Kapor calls a "Mirrortocracy". It can work, in the sense that maybe you can recruit enough people just like you, down to quirks of phrasing, and succeed in your mission. There are advantages to belonging to a cohort. It is the reason why people in the military wear uniforms and go through bootcamp. But categorically stating that diversity is wrong is, well, typical of the provincial attitude that caused Levchin to run his companies the way he did. But just because he's rich doesn't mean he's right.
- byrneseyeview 14y ago
  Aside from being "provincial," is he wrong? Diversity creates communications latency. For example, on HN I can refer to "latency" in this context--it would take way more syllables to express the same thought to lots of the people I interact with every day. Part of the problem is that "Diversity" is being misused. It's not "diversity" if a company of 100 people has exactly the same demographics as the city it's in. That's homogeneity: diversity would mean that each company's demographics are wildly skewed in unpredictable directions. Thomas Sowell has written about how intra-company diversity has harmful economic implications. For example, factories in New York used to segregate on religious lines--because if your Catholics are all off on Sunday, and your Jewish employees are all off on Saturday, then you can only work five days per week; all-Catholic or all-Jewish factories could do six days.
  - ojbyrne 14y ago
    But if you have enough of each group to fill one "shift" - then you can work seven days a week instead of six.
  - aristus 14y ago
    That cuts at the root of the disagreement. Categorically stating that diversity is "completely wrong" for a startup ignores plenty of counterexamples, so, yes, he's wrong. Diversity creates communications latency. It creates other things like tolerance and broader understanding. It also (ahem) widens your hiring pool. And no, I wouldn't want a company that reflects the demographics of my city. That would mean no black people and mexicans do all the cooking. :) Levchin is free to run his companies any way he wants, inside the law, and he's done amazingly well. But rejecting people who simply use an odd phrase once is, to me, not a example to celebrate, especially in a course for students. "I did this and succeeded" is not equal to "everyone else is wrong". Creating a mirrortocracy is equal to claiming "I am right, all the time, and I do not require outside opinions. All I require are clones." That's a pretty heavy bet to make, and its arrogance is not excused by success.
    - byrneseyeview 14y ago

by mkeblx 14y ago

alokv28 14y ago

It wasn't that he didn't get the job because he played basketball. It was that Max couldn't ever imagine himself or anyone else at PayPal referring to basketball as 'hoops' - this speaks to a greater cultural difference where this candidate might not be a great fit with the nerd / D&D culture that was pervasive in the company at the time.

DanBC 14y ago

I thought the context would make that quote sound better, but nope, it makes them sound even worse. > PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job. No PayPal people would ever have used the world “hoops.” Probably no one even knew how to play “hoops.” Basketball would be bad enough. But “hoops?” That guy clearly wouldn’t have fit in. He’d have had to explain to the team why he was going to go play hoops on a Thursday night. And no one would have understood him. > PayPal also had a hard time hiring women. An outsider might think that the PayPal guys bought into the stereotype that women don’t do CS. But that’s not true at all. The truth is that PayPal had trouble hiring women because PayPal was just a bunch of nerds! They never talked to women. So how were they supposed to interact with and hire them?

aristus 14y ago

Surprise surprise, the next paragraph: "PayPal also had a hard time hiring women." This kind of thinking is what Mitch Kapor calls a "Mirrortocracy". It can work, in the sense that maybe you can recruit enough people just like you, down to quirks of phrasing, and succeed in your mission. There are advantages to belonging to a cohort. It is the reason why people in the military wear uniforms and go through bootcamp. But categorically stating that diversity is wrong is, well, typical of the provincial attitude that caused Levchin to run his companies the way he did. But just because he's rich doesn't mean he's right.

byrneseyeview 14y ago
Aside from being "provincial," is he wrong? Diversity creates communications latency. For example, on HN I can refer to "latency" in this context--it would take way more syllables to express the same thought to lots of the people I interact with every day. Part of the problem is that "Diversity" is being misused. It's not "diversity" if a company of 100 people has exactly the same demographics as the city it's in. That's homogeneity: diversity would mean that each company's demographics are wildly skewed in unpredictable directions. Thomas Sowell has written about how intra-company diversity has harmful economic implications. For example, factories in New York used to segregate on religious lines--because if your Catholics are all off on Sunday, and your Jewish employees are all off on Saturday, then you can only work five days per week; all-Catholic or all-Jewish factories could do six days.
- ojbyrne 14y ago
  But if you have enough of each group to fill one "shift" - then you can work seven days a week instead of six.
- aristus 14y ago
  That cuts at the root of the disagreement. Categorically stating that diversity is "completely wrong" for a startup ignores plenty of counterexamples, so, yes, he's wrong. Diversity creates communications latency. It creates other things like tolerance and broader understanding. It also (ahem) widens your hiring pool. And no, I wouldn't want a company that reflects the demographics of my city. That would mean no black people and mexicans do all the cooking. :) Levchin is free to run his companies any way he wants, inside the law, and he's done amazingly well. But rejecting people who simply use an odd phrase once is, to me, not a example to celebrate, especially in a course for students. "I did this and succeeded" is not equal to "everyone else is wrong". Creating a mirrortocracy is equal to claiming "I am right, all the time, and I do not require outside opinions. All I require are clones." That's a pretty heavy bet to make, and its arrogance is not excused by success.
  - byrneseyeview 14y ago