Culture Fit Is A Lie by Madison Butler

Introduction

Gravity Speakers, LLC (“Company”,“We”, or Us”), respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it through compliance with this policy.

This policy describes the types of information we may collect from you or that you may provide when you visit the website www.gravityspeakers.com (“Website”) and our practices for collecting, using, maintaining, protecting, and disclosing that information. Company is the data controller for information processed through the Website.

This policy applies to information we collect:

On this Website.
In email, text, and other electronic messages between you and this Website.
When you interact with our advertising and applications on third-party websites and services if those applications or advertising include links to this policy.

It does not apply to information collected by:

us offline or through any other means, including on any other website operated by Company or any third party (including our affiliates and subsidiaries); or
any third party (including our affiliates and subsidiaries), including through any application or content (including advertising) that may link to or be accessible from or on the Website.

Please read this policy carefully to understand our policies and practices regarding your information and how we will treat it. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, your choice is not to use our Website. By accessing or using this Website, you agree to this privacy policy. This policy may change from time to time (see Changes to Our Privacy Policy). Your continued use of this Website after we make changes is deemed to be acceptance of those changes, so please check the policy periodically for updates.

Children

Our Website is not intended for nor targeted towards children as defined by applicable law. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you are younger than the age of consent in your jurisdiction, do not use or provide any information on this Website or on or through any of its features or provide any information about yourself to us, including your name, address, telephone number, email address, or any screen name or user name you may use. If you believe we might have any information from or about a child under the applicable age of consent, please contact us at Privacy@gravityspeakers.com and we will delete it.

Information We Collect About You and How We Collect It

We collect several types of information from and about users of our Website, including information:

by which you may be personally identified, such as name, postal address, e-mail address, telephone number, or any other identifier by which you may be contacted online or offline (“personal information”);
that is about you but individually does not identify you, such as organization, company or comments you may provide; and/or
about your internet connection, the equipment you use to access our Website and usage details.

We collect this information:

Directly from you when you provide it to us.
Automatically as you navigate through the site. Information collected automatically may include usage details, IP addresses, and information collected through cookies, web beacons, and other tracking technologies.
From third parties, for example, our business partners.

Information You Provide to Us.

The information we collect on or through our Website may include:

Information that you provide by filling in forms on our Website. This includes information provided at the time of requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you enter a contest or promotion sponsored by us, and when you report a problem with our Website.
Records and copies of your correspondence with us (including email addresses).
Your responses to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes.
Your search queries on the Website.

Information We Collect Through Automatic Data Collection Technologies.

As you navigate through and interact with our Website, we use automatic data collection technologies to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including:

Details of your visits to our Website, including traffic data, location data, logs, and other communication data and the resources that you access and use on the Website.
Information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type.

The information we collect automatically can be associated with other personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties. It helps us to improve our Website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to:

Estimate our audience size and usage patterns.
Store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our Website according to your individual interests.
Speed up your searches.
Recognize you when you return to our Website.

The technologies we use for this automatic data collection include:

Cookies (or browser cookies). A cookie is a small file placed on the hard drive of your computer. You may refuse to accept browser cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you direct your browser to our Website.
Flash Cookies. Certain features of our Website may use local stored objects (or Flash cookies) to collect and store information about your preferences and navigation to, from, and on our Website. Flash cookies are not managed by the same browser settings as are used for browser cookies. For information about managing your privacy and security settings for Flash cookies, see International Data Transfers
When you use the Website and provide information to Company through the Website, your information may be transferred to a destination outside your jurisdiction, including to the United States. The United States has not received a finding of “adequacy” from the European Union under Article 45 of the GDPR. Company has executed agreements between its affiliates and subsidiaries in accordance with Article 46 of the GDPR. Company also relies on derogations for specific situations set forth in Article 49 of the GDPR in order to transfer personal information across international borders outside of Company, its affiliates, and subsidiaries. In particular, Company transfers personal information across international borders only: with your consent; to perform a contract with you; or to fulfill a compelling legitimate interest of Company in a manner that does not outweigh your rights and freedoms.
Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information.
Web Beacons. Pages of the Website and our e-mails may contain small electronic files known as web beacons (also referred to as clear gifs, pixel tags, and single-pixel gifs) that permit the Company, for example, to count users who have visited those pages or opened an email and for other related website statistics (for example, recording the popularity of certain website content and verifying system and server integrity).

How We Use Your Information

We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information:

To present our Website and its contents to you.
To provide you with information, products, or services that you request from us.
To fulfill any other purpose for which you provide it.
To carry out our obligations and enforce our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, including for billing and collection.
To notify you about changes to our Website or any products or services we offer or provide though it.
In any other way we may describe when you provide the information.
For any other purpose to fulfilll our legitimate interests or with your consent.

For more information, see International Data Transfers

When you use the Website and provide information to Company through the Website, your information may be transferred to a destination outside your jurisdiction, including to the United States. The United States has not received a finding of “adequacy” from the European Union under Article 45 of the GDPR. Company has executed agreements between its affiliates and subsidiaries in accordance with Article 46 of the GDPR. Company also relies on derogations for specific situations set forth in Article 49 of the GDPR in order to transfer personal information across international borders outside of Company, its affiliates, and subsidiaries. In particular, Company transfers personal information across international borders only: with your consent; to perform a contract with you; or to fulfill a compelling legitimate interest of Company in a manner that does not outweigh your rights and freedoms.

Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information.

Disclosure of Your Information

We may disclose aggregated anonymized information about our users without restriction.

We may disclose personal information that we collect or you provide as described in this privacy policy:

To our subsidiaries and affiliates.
To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business.
To a buyer or other successor in the event of a merger, divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Company’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Company about our Website users is among the assets transferred.
To fulfill the purpose for which you provide it.
For any other purpose disclosed by us when you provide the information.
With your consent.

We may also disclose your personal information:

To comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request.
To enforce or apply our Terms of Use and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes.
If we believe disclosure is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Company, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organizations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

International Data Transfers

Choices About How We Use and Disclose Your Information

We strive to provide you with choices regarding the personal information you provide to us. We have created mechanisms to provide you with the following control over your information:

Tracking Technologies and Advertising. Our website does not respond to “Do Not Track” signals. You can set your browser to refuse all or some browser cookies, or to alert you when cookies are being sent. To learn how you can manage your Flash cookie settings, visit the Flash player settings page on Adobe’s website. If you disable or refuse cookies, please note that some parts of this site may then be inaccessible or not function properly.
Promotional Offers from the Company. If you do not wish to have your contact information used by the Company to promote our own or third parties’ products or services, you can opt-out by checking the relevant box located on the form on which we collect your data or at any other time by sending us an email stating your request to Privacy@gravityspeakers.com. If we have sent you a promotional email, you may send us a return email asking to be omitted from future email distributions.

We do not control third parties’ collection or use of your information to serve interest-based advertising. However, these third parties may provide you with ways to choose not to have your information collected or used in this way. You can opt out of receiving targeted ads from members of the Network Advertising Initiative (“NAI”) on the NAI’s website: https://www.networkadvertising.org/.

Your Rights

To the extent required by law, Company provides you with (i) reasonable access to the personal information collected through the Website, and (ii) the ability to review, correct, export, and delete such personal information. Please contact us using any of the methods identified in the “Contact Information” section if you would like to exercise your individual rights and for information on any fee required to obtain copies of your personal information. We may need to obtain or confirm certain personal information in order to accommodate your request. We will not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

Your California Privacy Rights

California Civil Code Section § 1798.83 permits users of our Website that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to Privacy@gravityspeakers.com or write us at: 570 El Camino Real, #150-250, Redwood City, CA 94063, Attn: General Counsel.

Data Security

We use commercially reasonable measures to secure information collected through the Website. Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information transmitted to our Website. Any transmission of personal information is at your own risk. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Website.

We retain your information for as long as needed: (i) to conduct business with you; (ii) as needed for the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy; (iii) as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce any agreements.

Changes to Our Privacy Policy

It is our policy to post any changes we make to our privacy policy on this page with a notice that the privacy policy has been updated on the Website home page. If we make material changes to how we treat our users’ personal information, we will notify you by email to the email address provided by you or through a notice on the Website home page. The date the privacy policy was last revised is identified at the top of the page. You are responsible for ensuring we have an up-to-date active and deliverable email address for you, and for periodically visiting our Website and this privacy policy to check for any changes.

Contact Information

To ask questions or comment about this privacy policy and our privacy practices, contact us at:

570 El Camino Real, #150-250, Redwood City, CA 94063, Attn: General Counsel

Email: Privacy@gravityspeakers.com

European Union: Company’s Data Protection Officer is Nausheen Razzak, and can be contacted using the information above. You can request copies of Company’s GDPR Article 46 agreements from the Data Protection Officer. Please contact the Data Protection Officer if you believe Company has processed your information in a manner inconsistent with your privacy rights. You also have the right to contact a supervisory authority if you believe Company has processed your information in a manner inconsistent with your privacy rights.

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Culture Fit Is A Lie by Madison Butler

December 15, 2021 10:20 PM

Featured Author:

Madison Butler

Let’s start with a quick quiz, who noticed I was a black woman before they started reading the article? It’s okay, I know I’m black so it’s okay for you to know too. However- how many of you would tell me it was the reason you weren’t going to hire me? Probably no one for two reasons.
1. Because I could sue you. 2. Because it wouldn’t look or feel good to say that and is overall bad for business. However, we’ve learned a way to operationalize our ism’s legally.

We’ve exchanged our biases for the word, “culture fit”. He wasn’t a culture fit, she wasn’t a culture fit. But at the heart of that phrase- what are we hiding?

We’re hiding our unconscious biases, and those of our hiring managers. So often we say “they’re not a culture fit” when what we really mean is “She is a woman” “They’re too black, too old, too queer.”

Culture Fit is a lie. We talk about culture fit when we don’t want to have hard conversations, when we don’t want to own our own biases. Asking for culture fit is asking for assimilation- which is ironic since we are trying to build diverse and inclusive workspaces. Isn’t that the new buzzword that we’re focused on these days?

Let’s start off with basic definitions, “What is culture?”

According to Merriam-Webster, Culture is defined as “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.”

Culture is not assimilation, it is expression. We are all different, from different cultures and different backgrounds and when you bring people together, you cannot expect them to check their human jacket at the door and assimilate into the corporate robot that people think we are. We’re humans, we all feel, live, and go through life differently.

My favorite example is last year, I had a hiring manager tell me a woman who was a complete badass, was not a “culture fit” so they were going to pass. I know y’all don’t know me- but I’m persistent and kind of nosy so I kept asking what that meant, trying to peel back the layers of that onion. Eventually, he said, “ I just don’t think a woman in her mid-forties is going to fit in on such a young team- she’ll hate it.” Whew, the shock on my face, but he kept going- “ Someone in their mid-forties who is comfortable making 50k a year isn’t going to be a fit here.” By now, I’m sure the color has drained completely from my face. I’m internally coaching myself- this is a lot to unpack- do we unpack this suitcase or should we burn the whole thing instead? I’m dying to run out of the room like I’m on fire- but I don’t. I ask him why he felt those things, especially as a man very close to her age. After an in-depth conversation around the importance of why we don’t get to decide what would make someone happy, and what the right amount of money is for an age group- we brought her back in for an interview.

The message here? Self-awareness is a choice. In order to fight unconscious biases we have to look at them dead on in the face. We need to be able to call out the BS within ourselves and with our teams. We swear we want to build inclusive and diverse cultures, but are we really doing that if we want “a culture fit”- if everyone FITS then chances are they aren’t very different.

Diversity does not fit a mold. We cannot always hire people we like, in fact- we shouldn’t. I shouldn’t want to grab a beer with everyone I hire. When I hire people, I’m not asking myself “Do I want to go catch a game with them?” I’m asking myself, how will they contribute to this team, are they a good person, how do they add value?

That’s the key- value add. We shouldn’t be looking for people to fit in, we should be looking for people to add value.

As we build inclusive cultures, we should be allowing for people to take up space, not expecting them to fit into premed spaces. We’re not legos, or a game of tetras.

We’re solving for the stress case, not the test case. If you solve for the most marginalized person you can think of, you’ve solved for all of us.

As a black woman, I don’t want to be a culture fit, I want to be a culture add, a value add — I want to be valued for my lived experiences and the perspectives I have because of that

As Kanye West said, “If you knew better, you’d do better.” As someone who cares deeply for humans and equality, I try to do better every day by calling out my own BS and I hope you will too.

This original article by Madison Butler can be found here.

Featured Author

Madison Butler

Madison Butler is a Black, queer woman, and a survivor. Her work is focused around designing spaces and creating scalable strategies to achieve psychological safety. An outspoken advocate for mental health, she is passionate about facilitating hard conversations through storytelling, data, and tough empathy, removing stigma around trauma, and advisor for being “human at work”.

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