What is “culture fit” actually mean?
I’d been rejected from start-up with following comments: “... we have boiled down to seeing if you would be a culture fit or not nothing else..” Little bit about interview and background: company are small, but I like stack of technologies and company size. Solved all coding tasks and whiteboarding during phone screening and on-site interview. Ever mailed them linear complexity solution because they’d mentioned it is real task and looks like they’d solved it in inefficient way. Last month 2 or more developers left what probaby high attrition rate for such small company and I saw theirs open position for last two month or ever more. I’m not local and came to US 5 year ago. And now my question. WTF is that “cultural fit”? And how do you actually able to check cultural fit during one hour interview?
Vanity fit
If your interviewers were mostly Asian and your ethnicity differs from theirs, then culture fit criteria is used to reject you.
Every answer so far is salty as fuck The cultural fit is whether you are pleasant to be around, easy to talk to, and humble. That's like 90% of what a programmer's cultural fit needs to be. You probably either: - could not explain yourself very clearly - dismissed something they found important - were aggressive or condescending during the interview - are not easy to work with, despite understanding the code well
That means they didn’t like you as much as another candidate.
It's basically the answer of: "Do I want to work with this person?"
It means you arent attractive. Attractive people are a culture fit everywhere. Stop being overweight and shorter than 6 foot tall.
Cringe
The truth hurts
I would say don’t be upset with that reason. Honestly you intellectually would be a fit but you want to work somewhere that you can actually be friends with people. If that’s not the case and they think that then don’t worry. You’ll just take that talent elsewhere and find a fit.
Interviewers are often looking at behavior traits while someone solves technical problems. How you approach a problem, accept criticism , react to a counter argument are some of the behavior traits managers and interviewers are looking at.This helps them see how you would behave on a day to day basis on the job . If they perceive you as someone who will blend in easily into their working style you would be a culture fit. One hour is a short duration to judge this , but an experienced interviewer can easily spot this trait.
Are you self-driven or do you need too much hand-holding might have entered their consideration. Some SWE engineers at big companies might be brilliant but tainted by a culture of meetings, consensus-building before taking initiatives, and such.
It’s whatever the **** they want it to mean