Some people seem to expect more from their job than just a place in a cubicle where they can do their duty for 8 hours and then go home. They want to have fun, be together with cool people and so on. If you can't bond over music, there is one fun factor less (btw Michael Bolton was a reference to the movie "Office Space").

If you manage to run your company as a factory where individuality doesn't matter, only code output or whatever, good for you. I don't see why it should be the go-to model for everyone, though.

I seem to remember blog posts about the music system at GitHub. Not sure if they play music over speakers? If anybody would put Michael Bolton on, the feelgood atmosphere might receive a serious dent.

Btw I am not a recruiter.

"If you manage to run your company as a factory where individuality doesn't matter". - You don't see the irony of this in the context of your argument for rejecting people because they have different musical taste? (not programming language preference but musical taste). The point of the article and its title "mirrortocracy" is that these people are building clones of themselves because of their narrowmindedness and that's increasing their chances of failure.

This is no different than any narrowminded and now dead organisation of the past that failed to survive because they couldn't take on people who weren't "the right type". As a result they failed to even find out what they don't know, let alone how to fix it and were completely surprised when history passed them by and they became the butt of the joke. (Mind you the 42 floors article is a parody in itself so we don't have to wait for the joke)

"The point of the article and its title "mirrortocracy" is that these people are building clones of themselves because of their narrowmindedness and that's increasing their chances of failure."

I know that is what they claim, but is there any proof? Anything at all? That was my question. The claim is that you should hire people you know nothing about rather than people you know something about. Like if you are from Harvard, you shouldn't hire other people from Harvard, you should hire people from some community college, who are as different from you as possible.

"This is no different than any narrowminded and now dead organisation of the past that failed to survive because they couldn't take on people who weren't "the right type". "

Which organizations you talking about? Name at least one example, please. I am not aware of such a story.

Another way to phrase the question: should you hire people you could likely be friends with? If not, why not?

What if their taste in music or people changes, as their non-work social circle evolves? Do they become less desirable employees?

It's not impossible, is it? Companies fire people they had employed for years all the time. Friends drift apart all over the world, all the time, too.

And I never said you should hire based on musical taste, just that it is possibly a relevant data point.