The conferences did it because it was part of their marketing for the atmosphere of the conference. It's the exact same reason companies do it too.

Working for a specific company is just as voluntary (imo, it's certainly debateable).

If it's something you absolutely won't do, pick another company or negotiate so you don't have to - just like any other aspect of a job.

Triple post! Sorry, posting on the phone between dealing with freaking out kid.

I'm curious about the analogy. If it's offensive to me - you have my permission to proceed.

At this point, I'm going to have to agree with the idea that 'culture fit' is indeed doing what it was supposed to do.

What part of any of my posts did I say I was the kind that won't go and grab a beer with a coworker? You are making very good arguments, as usual, but you are kind of dodging the issues I am raising.

If the company is not trying to hire BBF4Lyfe's, then why are they making a huge show of it like they are? This is where I am struggling. How am I supposed to navigate these waters when all I care about is getting the job and doing something I enjoy?

My analogy is just terrible and offensive. I'm not a comedian, nor do I aspire to be Donald Trump. It did involve Victoria's Secret though.

I'm not saying you said you won't get a beer with a coworker.

See my post you quoted. They're trying to hire people that are sociable, friendly, and will generally enjoy hanging out with each other. They're not trying to hire people that will be lifelong friends and need to do all social activities together. This is what I meant with my teenager comment. Showing interest in occasionally hanging out or doing the occasional non-work activity together isn't the same as wanting to do everything together and building up a complex non-work relationship.

There are lots of reasons for a company to do this (or to just make a show of doing it) ranging from being a perk for many perspective employees to improving productivity.


What a tease.

What I think of when I see people talking about cultural fit.


Funny how "cultural fit" happens to be young, white, and male.


http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2...anic/14684211/

False dichotomy much? The marketing person in charge of the web site saw half a dozen other web sites in their sector where they were having "fun" on the 'who are we' page and decided they should do it too. They were able to convince their boss who probably didn't care one way or the other because they were doing real work. It has very little to do with what actually happens at the company because it's marketing.

Outstanding soul reads ITT!

False dichotomy?

I'm pretty sure the CEO / Founder of a tech company kind of cares about the image the company's website projects and cares deeply about the culture of the entire company.

Why does marketing get blamed for everything anyways? They don't have this kind of power.

The only reason they are putting on a big show of having a fun place to work is so you'll find your BFFs there. No other possible reason. You're right, not a false dichotomy.

The CEO's and other C level people very rarely have much to do with the company website, fwiw.

Even if they are very hands on, it is almost always from a results-oriented approach to make sure the main goals of the site are accomplished. The people doing the design, copy, content, etc. are rarely executives.

That's not my experience. The companies I've worked at had the CEO very involved with approving non-trivial changes to the corporate website.

Edit: These are small/medium tech companies. I'm sure bigger companies aren't working in the same way.

dave, it's surprising that you have so much first hand experience with comically dysfunctional organizations but still have this pure, romantic view of startup CEOs. while obviously there are exceptions, for the most part people are putting "deeply caring" thought into very things at a startup, mainly because they're spread so thin they don't have time. "what's the culture we're trying to project on the company website to make potential employees feel comfortable? why the **** are you wasting my time with that question? i'm trying to raise money and make the business work! just do whatever the **** you want and hire somebody good!" that's the POV I'd expect from a CEO.

I'm not sure if you were directing that at my post but if you were or not.
It does not matter if you choose to lie to someone and not show up. Specially if these people are the ones you work with and want no social relation with them.

I've seen people that are afraid of trampling on people by saying no, I don't want to go to x. They don't want to break someone's feelings or they believe whatever excuse they come up with will bother the person asking. Yes you probably could fit whatever they ask into your life and you are turning them down.

A lie, "that you slept when you got home" is nothing elaborate but very is easy to use.
Now i'm not enforcing the idea of going by this strategy in life by blowing a date off or something with it.

The situation in the case people are discussing, seems optimal for lie than saying you don't want to show up.

I'd maintain that the company photo wall is trivial, it is at the start up I'm at and the CEO's wife took the pictures...

I guess maybe. I know we took that page pretty seriously when we were really small because it's a core part of imparting competency to customers and investors. As you grow its more of a recruiting thing - and probably not that important. Although I still don't know a CEO that wouldn't make sure they were ok with the tone and messaging of that page.

We build websites and are specializing at the mid-market software range.

On one of our projects the CEO is involved, and really only at the highest level (timeline mostly), the other ones the CEOs have had pretty much zero impact.

By mid-market I'm speaking of 300-3k employee companies.

We're going to hit >100 by the end of the year again but never hit 300 employees.

lol, Oracle.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theoprie...fosec-experts/

One of the Postgres core team members was right on it! haha

Please, security test our code!

I really enjoyed meeting with you and will absolutely keep you in mind if any future positions open up.

Except for one minor detail: we never met.

This was a founder who was deeply involved in her website. Originally had it built overseas and then decided to 180 and bring all the development in-house. I'm guessing my lack of years of MySQL experience didn't help my chances.

Figured that was relevant to the recent conversation.

The Pen&Teller approach can work for a lot of people but cultural fit would be pretty damn important for me if I would look for a cofounder for example.

ok so the concept of flux sounds fine. Not that difficult. Why is every single implementation of it ridiculous? I want to find out to do a simple "on this component's click event, a different component does something" and every single example is literally a 2000 line todoapp.

I guess I might lose 2p2 again on Aug. 17th. I guess regular, non-underage pornography is still good to go!

Unless it qualifies as sex education or swimsuits are involved.

Why is chat blocked but FB etc. are not...such a curious pair of lists. Online storage is also odd. No dropbox for you.