"Culture Fit": Perhaps it DOES Have a Purpose

Last month, the tech community was whipped into a frenzy by a Gawker article demonizing the term "culture fit" as another way of marginalizing women in an already tough environment. I will agree that the so-called bro environment of the tech world makes it difficult for women to advance. Some nerds feel that a pretty girl is just that. She has zero intellect and holds little substance other than being fodder to add to his spank bank when he's alone in his bedroom. This belief that women are incapable of making it in science and technology doesn't just start once they hit Silicon Valley. The belief is ingrained before they've even matriculated from their respective universities where misogynistic professors shoot down their creativity and kill their spirit believing their male counterparts are far superior. In short, life for the female tech nerd isn't easy. However, it doesn't help that other women make it far more difficult. Now, what I'm going to say will upset some folks. However, please understand that I'm speaking from my own experiences in the work force and those of many people I've known over the years. That being said: in the past, I have generally hated working with women and I AM a woman!

Since I've graduated college and entered the adult working world, I've never once doubted that my fellow ladies could handle their own in male-dominated industries. We have all proven time and time again that we are just as intelligent, driven, and savvy as even the most dominant Alpha male. The problem I've had with working with most women has nothing to do with their ability to perform their job. It has to do with their personalities. The majority of the women I've worked with are some of the most catty, unprofessional, immature harpies I've ever encountered outside of high school. The age of most of these women would shock you. Add into that, a hyper competitive environment and you have a recipe for a major sh*tstorm.

I've seen female managers flat out lie and even break federal laws to get rid of another female they hated. I've witnessed two female coworkers get into the office equivalent of a bar fight. I had a boss (also a woman) fire me when I refused to cover up the Medicare scam she was attempting to perpetuate in her company after she fired my predecessor for also refusing to go along with it. I once had a different manager that told several of my coworkers that she would cut my hours if I didn't come back to work after being hospitalized with a severe illness. She reportedly was smiling when she said this because she hoped it would make me angry enough to quit. I've seen some downright insane behavior that was juvenile at the very least and workplace bullying at worst. In all my years, I've only had an issue with ONE male coworker. The rest were always women.

Women tend to gang up on each other, engage in gossip, and behave much more cruelly than men it seems. I'm not making it out that men are some sort of angels here. Men can be extremely chauvinistic and condescending in the workplace as well, but women just take it to a whole other level. While most men would eventually get bored and move on from a target, women keep going until that person has damn near snapped. The last experience I had working for a certain famous coffee shop where I dealt with venomous little girls (as they don't deserve to be called women) has left me so scarred I hope to God I never have to go back to the company no matter what my financial situation is. After I left that awful place, every job I interviewed for, I would find myself inquiring about the male-to-female ratio. If there was a significantly higher number of women over men, I'd quickly walk out saying "thanks but no thanks." The Gawker article had me intrigued because I question whether there even NEEDS to be a large presence of women in the tech world.

Hear me out, but if there was suddenly a 40% increase of women in Silicon Valley working for startups or VC firms, how would that impact the work environment? Yes, these women would all be brilliant, but what of their personalities and their ability to play nice with others? Take for example the infamous Sarah Lacy. She seems to enjoy her well deserved bitch on wheels reputation all the while mistakenly believing that just makes her an assertive professional woman. I've heard people defend women like her saying that "oh, if she were a man, blah blah blah." NO! If she were a man, people would've written her off long ago. Instead, she gets a pass because she's cute. The problem is, it's women like her that make it harder for other women to be taken seriously in the tech world (or any world in the workforce.) Not every woman who ventures to Silicon Valley is going to be like Sarah Lacy or some of my previous female coworkers. Many are going to be dedicated and hardworking and not so caught up in b.s. such as "OMG, I can't believe how low cut her shirt is! She looks like a whore!"

Culture fit, and other practices like it, DO have a place. However, if a company chooses to believe in the veracity of the phrase, then they should strictly outline exactly what that means from an HR perspective. Just because you dress like Zuckerberg or can drink your average frat guy under the table doesn't make you an awesome potential hire or startup. It beggars belief that a VC would make business decisions based off the fact that a young white guy showed up in a t-shirt, jeans, and a hoodie. That being said, the very idea of "culture fit" needs to be revamped, and if not, then it needs to be completely done away with. I believe, if used properly, it could be utilized to weed out the incompetent from the serious worker, and yes, that does include females. Not that I'm encouraging homogeneous work environments, but if you're someone who doesn't fit in with the personalities of the rest of the team, it just won't work out. Let's say you're angry, confrontational, and flat out bitchy. You mighty prefer to settle your differences with harsh words and yelling while the team already in place prefers to talk things over calmly. You won't last in a place like that because eventually, you'll alienate everyone else. I don't care how smart you are, if you're just going to create a tense work environment with a bunch of drama then I wouldn't want you there. And if I worked in Silicon Valley, I would be very hesitant to work with a bunch of women if they acted anything like Rachel McAdams' character in Mean Girls!