This is disappointing, not so much because fit doesn't matter, but because it depends on people being good at it.

Most people are unaware of their internal biases. I can imagine an HR person who doesn't regularly work with developers being unconsciously biased towards people they want to work with, rather than people who work well with other developers.

It's also hard to differentiate between someone who grates on you and someone who's hard to work with. Just because you don't feel like you can be besties with someone doesn't mean you can't get good work done with them.

These are all important factors, especially in a small team, that can weed out a potential hire just on an interviewer having poorly tuned skills.

One danger I see in doing technical interviews first, though, is that it can create a confirmation bias in the other direction. Red flags get ignored because the hard skills offered feel more important, especially if time is of the essence woth the hire -- and suddenly you've got a little Napoleon making your other developers' lives hell.

So, if the vibe check is being done by an interviewer who you won't be working with, that's a red flag for the candidate to note. If the interviewer doesn't take a nuanced approach to speaking and listening, that's another red flag.

But if the company does that vibe check well, it can save a lot of time.

As a note, for the person you spoke with, being soft-spoken shouldn't be a red flag for the company -- unless the company has serious cultural issues itself. And there's no shortage of toxic companies.

One challenge I see in today's culture is trying to weed out the vast array of disappointing companies. With the entry costs of creating a tech company so historically low, there's so many people with no idea how to "build the next Google" trying to pretend they know how to build teams, or outsourcing hiring entirely.

So, yeah, it's something of a race to the bottom in a glut, both on the developer and company sides of the fence. But if done right, the vibe check can be useful. Done wrong, it can filter out the wrong people, as well as potentially ooen the company up to a discrimination suit.

All in all, interviewing is rough for everybody on both sides.