We Will Call You
Ep 7: Cultural Fit
Fact-based job-seeking-opera for geeks
“As you can see, the prototype I prepared checks all the boxes listed in the task description. In addition, I also wrote a visualization module, which was not required, but I thought it would naturally complement the exercise.”
Domnall smiled proudly, as he reached for a glass of water. He spoke for the past forty minutes trying to summarize the week of intense work on prototype preparation. The task was not conceptually difficult, but it made up for it with its onerousness. The provided data turned out to be an unprocessed pile of Internet posts — mainly verbal farts, burps and hiccups — which Internet users exchange vigorously to communicate with each other on social media. Domnall lost five full days by simply clearing the data of irrelevant clusters of characters, spelling mistakes, and self-promotional ornaments. He spent the next two days building the required classifier and preparing a presentation.
He felt exhausted but satisfied. He provided a prototype for which any consultancy would probably charge the equivalent of his six-month salary. It shall be more than enough to demonstrate his usefulness beyond any doubt. The company to which he applied probably came to the same conclusion, as they skipped the interview with the HR department and jumped directly to the meeting with the head of the software development team.
“Yes … yes …” muttered the man on the other side of the table. “This visualization… was simple enough…” he said under his breath, without even looking up. All his attention was drawn to the scribble he was filling with the fourth consecutive page in his notebook. “If you’d be so kind… and returned to…” He briskly put the last period. He looked up and finished: “… and returned to the code snippet where you link the cleared posts from several different sources.” He gave Domnall a moment to find the proper lines in the script. “If you were to present this to a non-technical person, how would you do it?”
Domnall suppressed a sigh of relief. When he heard who he would talk to, he was afraid of questions about code optimization, which he had a rather vague idea about. Whereas the technical manager decided to test his communication skills with the business. Satisfied with the turn of events, Domnall brought a patient smile to his face.
“Imagine you are talking to two managers from two different departments. They came to the meeting with differently formatted presentations…”
“No, that’s not it.” The man smiled nervously. “Our business team is well versed in technical issues and there is no need to enter such a high level of abstraction.”
Domnall raised the eyebrow.
“It can be an interesting experience. The managers I have worked with so far were usually delighted with examples referring to the situation they could relate to.”
“Here, we have other needs.”
“What abstraction level should I enter then?”
“Explain how you combined the output from these two text cleanup modules. From what you described here, they appear to have different formats.”
Domnall looked at the script and slapped his forehead.
“Yeah. In the first module, just before returning the string, I reformat it using the function called here.” Domnall marked the right line of code on the screen. “Thanks to that both results have the same format.”
“Where is this function?”
“In the library… which I attached as a separate file,” Domnall answered uncertainly, not knowing whether he was talking to the head of the software development department again or to the business phantom the guy was playing. However, he did not dare point out to him that this type of question from people who should rather be interested in the applications of his software would be somewhat… unusual.
Meanwhile, the man was studying the code snippet, biting his lips.
“Oh,” he said finally, “so you just merge the result data from both cleaners, and then use it as input for the predictor?”
“Exactly.”
“Great.” The man nodded his head in delight. “That’s all I needed. Thank you very much.” He got up from the chair, picked up the laptop and his notebook from the table, and, avoiding the interlocutor’s gaze, added: “I will send a report from our conversation to the HR department.”
Domnall looked at him. Suddenly he became convinced that something was very wrong here. He almost cried in desperation:
“And why will this opinion be negative?”
The man jumped up in fear. He gave the interviewee a scared look and tightened his grip on the computer as if the device suddenly grew in weight on his hands.
“Well… you know,” he stammered, with the corner of his eye measuring the distance separating him from the door. “Every company has its… erm… unique culture. I have the impression that you are not the best… erm… fit?”
Domnall clenched his teeth in the act of self-censorship, as he didn’t find any words he could say to the man. The lack of cultural fit was a fact — he would never think of appropriating someone’s work in such a blunt way.
“If that’s all, goodbye to you,” the man said in a hurry. The bulky loot prevented him from shaking hands. “We will call you.”
We Will Call You Series:
Episode 1: Data Democratization
Episode 2: Stimulating Work Environment
Episode 6: Passionate, more passionate, hired!
Episode 7: Cultural Fit (current)
Domnall is a brilliant guy. However, job-seeking is long-term entertainment, and will probably take him a while. Especially that job interviews don’t happen every day. In the meantime, you may consider reading about other (equally brilliant) characters in our #Pharmacon sociological thriller.
