Think teleologically: the _real_ purpose of the Culture Fit rubric is to give hiring managers and teams an arbitrary way to deny someone from being hired. Any language written around this concept is purely designed to protect HR or managers from discrimination lawsuits.

This is an exceptionally powerful tool to have; as capricious as it may be from time to time, it is critical that a team still actually have some amount of say into its composition. Sometimes it's hard to put into words why you don't want to work with someone; something they said rubbed you the wrong way, or their approach seems like one that will result in arguments and sore feelings, who knows.

This is where a good manager is able to actually use their intuition and wisdom to weigh in on a hire where otherwise a strict business process may force their hand. We need to leave opportunities for this, even if it can backfire. A good manager is not going to let personal bias get in the way of having an effective team; but in turn a good manager is not going to hire someone that breaks their team dynamic even if they have the exact skillset that's needed.

> Are there corporate definitions of culture fit?

If there are, they will be made by individual HR departments, and the wording doesn't matter, because the wording exists to defend the original purpose, which is to enable hiring managers to arbitrarily reject people.

> To what extent does "culture fit" affect productivity?

Massively.

"Culture" in this context refers to sort of a mishmash of things:

- Workplace-specific norms and customs (working hours, expectations around productivity and turnaround time, etc)
- Quality of personal interactions (this is where language barriers, activist politics, argument style, ability to explain things clearly, etc. weigh in)
- Mindset and approach (this is where you need actual alignment, a new hire has to not go completely against the grain of the team or there will be a negative impact).

I've been on teams where we've hired people the team said "don't hire, not a culture fit". The result has been a worker who isn't making friends on the team, isn't working closely with people, isn't meshing with the work expectations, and ultimately holds the team back. Gossip and drama are the natural result, lots of DMs and behind-the-back conversations. It can wreck a good thing, and hold back work more than not having the person in the first place.

> being older, I suspect it means "young and politically aligned", but again, that probably betrays my age.

I am getting close to that age myself, and I gotta tell you, I would probably be a little intimidated being on a team of 20-somethings. Think about it: they can spend 12 hours a day working if they want, I need to pick up kids from school, feed 'em, put 'em to bed, spend time with them. They can coast on their metabolisms when need be, I need to exercise near-daily or I will lose whatever fitness I've retained. They wake up bright-eyed after a night drinking, I need a whole day to recover. It's tough.

This may mean at some point that I will need to flip to working on things that were once cutting edge and are now legacy. Will I every truly learn K8S? Hard to say, but on the flip side, will zoomers who have grown up Cloud Native ever really learn how to manage physical hardware? There's a big niche for us with older skillsets and it's not going away - ask a COBOL programmer.

Culture fit is something you-as-the-prospective-employee should care about too. They may be saving you from signing up for something you really actually wouldn't enjoy or be effective at. Or, politically speaking, they may save you from ending up on a team of Woke People. Plenty of teams of old white guys still out there, may as well join one of them and have coworkers you can actually joke around with and enjoy the company of more...