Playing devil's advocate, there are definitely entirely legitimate reasons one might fail a "culture-fit" interview, especially for a remote hire: Perhaps you weren't so much "not-like-us" as "you kids don't know shit, just wait until you hire me" (your comment does come off slightly condescending) or just generally as someone who'd struggle being outranked by someone 10 years your junior (I understand mid-western values to be slightly more conservative)? Perhaps they didn't feel your ideas of what remote work would look like was aligned with theirs, and they didn't feel you responded to hint that they didn't? Perhaps you indicated a style of working that they feel wouldn't fit well (are you going to be actively picking up work on your own, or are you just going to work your tickets and check out -- or perhaps the exact opposite, either is bad if you're not aligned)?
Culture fit (or, more like "working-style-fit") is even more important for a remote position, because the bandwidth for subtle feedback is so narrow.
But of course, I know neither you nor the startup in questions, so purely speculation -- but there are reasonable explanations that isn't that you didn't fit into a small, narrow-minded box (which, of course, is definitely also a plausible explanation).
If you're going to reject people for "culture fit", and not because of any technical deficiency, then I believe you should lose any right to complain about a so-called "shortage of talent".
What's your point? That you shouldn't try to filter candidates for culture fit because your methods for doing so might be flawed?
Sure, anything done badly enough can be worse than not doing it, but that is a completely obvious and irrelevant assertion. It's still important to filter for culture fit.
> No, it really isn't. If you have professionals on your team, they will be able to work together.
Okay, would it feel more comfortable if we interviewed for "professionalism" instead of "culture fit"? Fully realizing that standards of professionalism are different for each company and team within a company, i.e. that professional standards are part of a team's culture?
> And once again, most places are using "culture fit" as a way to say, "Not like me", and using it to enable discriminatory hiring practices.
That is true sometimes, but not always.
More to the point, tightening the politically correctness standards of language around the problem does absolutely nothing to prevent discrimination--it just makes discrimination harder to identify. And in the process you're throwing out the idea that sometimes people aren't likely to get along--which is not a function of race/gender/class/etc. If you think someone is using "cultural fit" as an excuse for discrimination, the solution is to call them out for that, not to pretend that "cultural fit" doesn't describe a real phenomenon. What makes you think that a bigot can't say that someone isn't technically qualified in order to exclude them?
A perfect example of this: I said someone wasn't a cultural fit a year ago, but I was outvoted because of his technical abilities. Four months later he was fired for groping the administrative assistant, and afterward, more incidents came to light. Do you think that my workplace was more or less discriminatory because we hired someone without regard to his cultural fit?
Not necessarily. When we talk about someone being a good culture fit at the place I work, we look for someone who's respectful, approachable, not condescending, and who wants to empower their coworkers.
There are many brilliant technical people who are jerks—we don't want to work with them. (And not to say that there's not a place for super-smart people who are assholes, but we try not to hire them.)
Sure, evaluating that someone is respectful, tactful and approachable is best done with a few hour interview. Riiight.
Anyone who believes that should be immediately fired. Those things come out in a few months at earliest, as does lack of professionalism or competence. Even a good judge of character needs a sample in non-contrived circumstances, which a hiring interview is not.
I'd actually like to see hard research data on this... What I have is soft data on how people are in general horrible judges of character. In that plain old days mining is often more accurate.
"You do not truly know someone until you fight (with) them."
Culture fit (or, more like "working-style-fit") is even more important for a remote position, because the bandwidth for subtle feedback is so narrow.
But of course, I know neither you nor the startup in questions, so purely speculation -- but there are reasonable explanations that isn't that you didn't fit into a small, narrow-minded box (which, of course, is definitely also a plausible explanation).