Cultural Fit and Ageism

I was reading a Coding Horror article by Jeff Atwood about how to hire a programmer. I agree with most of it, although he is clearly hiring his programmer to work in some fancy schmancy Internet startup in Silicon Valley, not out here in the real world of enterprises and business intelligence.

Here’s the part that irritates me when industry people talk about jobs and hiring: “Cultural Fit.” To me, that basically means you’re not going to get hired if you don’t have the right kind of personality and attitude. Your skillset doesn’t matter; you’re being evaluated as a roommate more than a skilled worker.

Part of that is having dinner and talking about stuff like the culture, philosophy, mistakes we’ve made, plans, whatever.

Dinner?!? I can’t imagine having dinner as part of an interview process here in Richmond. That would seriously creep me out. The obvious exception to that is if I were going to be getting a share of ownership in the company I’m going to be working for. And that’s probably not going to happen with Capital One or Dominion Virginia Power or the handful of other large companies that hire developers in Richmond.

I can understand not wanting to hire a serial killer. But much beyond that just screams out age-ism. I’m over 40, so obviously I’m never going to be a “cultural fit” with any 20-somethings (thank god). So in an industry that is constantly bashed for discriminating against older workers, how exactly is promoting “cultural fit” supposed to dispel that illusion?