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HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

rachelbythebay.com

121–130 of 471 posts

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#121
I'm a senior SRE now software developer building infrastructure with a decade of experience and an engineering degree.

I'm also a woman.

When I mentor serious younger women coming into these challenging but rewarding jobs I always tell them:

HR is not your friend.

They are not there to protect you. They are there to protect the organization. If they see you as a liability, and they often do over the man being complained about, they will find a way to get rid of you.

If I told you the experiences I've been through, I would get bombarded by a bunch of white conservative males on this site telling me I'm making it up, so I don't even bother.

In reality, the whole diversity in tech thing is a marketing scheme for these big companies. But once they hire you don't speak...don't have opinions. Put your head down and do your job. They don't actually care about you beyond their ability to print a picture of you on their website but if you dare cause trouble you are out. They could not care the least about your long term career development beyond their ability to market you externally. Behind closed doors, HR will gaslight you and kick you out if things are actually bad. The only bigger slap in the face this could possibly be beyond that is the people sitting across the table from you justifying why what you're telling them isn't a big deal or trying to gaslight you or trying to turn the tables on you are mostly women. Women who are rewarded for shutting up and doing what men want them to do at the expense of everyone else, and they have no clue nor do they want to of what it's really like to be a women on the other side of the fence in a male dominated environment.

HR is not your friend. If you are a woman and having issues with males at your company the answer is to get the hell out as quickly as possible without them knowing beforehand. Especially if other people observe the negative experiences you do and don't say anything it means You cannot change the culture and trying to at the expense of your career should not be the hill you die on. Some men also just don't believe women should speak in meetings at all period. It's an unspoken rule and I've unfortunately only ever had this problem with managers who are makes from countries where womens rights aren't respected.

We in tech cumulatively cannot even begin to comprehend the permanent damage we've set in place and invisible barriers for decades to come we've set up by allowing men who don't respect women as equals to participate in the workforce. It should be a requirement but I can tell you as the least of my woes I have worked for two men who do not believe women should speak, ever, and I have been severely punished in my career for challenging this. You cannot begin to imagine....

If you find yourself unhappy. Whatever you do do not go to HR. They are sick. They are mostly evil. They are the kind of woman who work at Microsoft and tell women behind closed doors it's ok to sit in a man's lap at work when he asks you to especially if he's your superior and after it gets leaked publicly they stand on stage pretend to be sorry and pretend to fix it (they never do). This is what HR is. I have been bullied by HR. I have sat across the desk from a woman in HR who made a fraction of what I did at the time decked out in designer bought by the man she was dating, my superior at work and ignored me. I cannot even begin to describe the level of ice cold HR is. They are the bitches incarnate of this world.

Your goal if you are a female in tech is to make sure HR forgets you exist after they hire you.

If you find yourself unhappy. Do not go to HR. Do not try to make things better at your expense if the other party isn't trying. Apply elsewhere agressively and gtfo.

Take yourself out to a nice bar. Buy yourself some drinks. Rest all weekend. Wake up on Monday and turn in your two weeks notice after negociating up a better salary elsewhere because if you are a women in tech and work hard and actually have skills there are many companies who also have shitty HR because it is the standard but atleast have cultures so much better the likliehood you need to go to HR is pretty nonexistent.

Never...never go to HR. They are not there for you. They are not your friend.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#122

Reminds me of The Gervais Principle, which is also excellent: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Thanks a lot - Rachel’s article as well as the one you linked to hit home extremely hard.

Besides the comics (re: macleod, dilbert, the office) or this very article - is there a field that occupies itself seriously with the described kind of dynamic?

Or a good forum where these things are discussed?

I’m looking for further information to deepen my understanding or a forum to bounce off thoughts and exchange experiences around that.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#123
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And nor does anyone have a 'career'. You have a job. When you lose that job, you may not get another one. It's an illusion. One minute you think you are a high profile manager with budgets and power. The next you are packing your desk up into a box and rethinking your entire life. We are not our careers!

I am always terrified of losing my job. It's a fear I've had even though I've been a top performer the entire five years I've been professionally working. Maybe it's because I grew up poor or because I think things are too good in tech and about to crash any day. My antidote? $100k in liquidity. Preferably not invested in the NASDAQ. If tech crashes, you can take your liquid $100k and move to Thailand, Spain, Portuga…

Indeed, it's a cushion that gives incredible peace of mind. Not only job-related, but also gives the option to deal with all sorts of other life-related problems.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the major difference that these days a lot of people get to choose their employers. Yes, it's not perfect and not everyone can afford that, but we moved significantly from "you live here, this is your lord".

And if you are willing to buck the system completely, which as you point out is not compulsory as it was before, you can leave and go live off the land. Unfortunately almost everyone has lost the skill to do this.

> And if you are willing to buck the system completely, which as you point out is not compulsory admit was before, you can leave and go live off the land. Unfortunately almost everyone has lost the skill to do this.

Huh? Whose land? The frontier has been closed for a long time.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we tried to make it so there were no lords? Just a thought.

It’s been tried - mostly leads to disaster, see: animal farm. Hierarchy can work well, particularly for growing companies and making decisions. It obviously has problems as a form of government, but the incentive structure of capitalism is a good one for work. Even in democratic governments with elections you still have a decision hierarchy somewhere (hopefully just with some checks on their power)

> incentive structure of capitalism is a good one for work.

The inventive structure of capitalism is good for capitalists. Why would they make it any other way?

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the major difference that these days a lot of people get to choose their employers. Yes, it's not perfect and not everyone can afford that, but we moved significantly from "you live here, this is your lord".

And if you are willing to buck the system completely, which as you point out is not compulsory as it was before, you can leave and go live off the land. Unfortunately almost everyone has lost the skill to do this.

Also not much land to freely live off of, unless you have the wealth to secure some already.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#127

Here's another thing to note: At least a few people here have probably heard the words "culture fit" uttered when a decision is being made to bring a new employee onboard. That's basically just a socially acceptable way of validating discrimination in hiring (with ageism being a typical example).

Culture fit is more an assessment of how similar the candidate’s current workplace is to yours, than anything about the candidate personally. It’s “unfair” in that it penalizes the candidate for doing what is appropriate in their current environment, without knowing how well they might be able to assimilate and be effective under your norms.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the serf, I can go find another Lord. I can pit the lords against each other for a better deal. I can try and become my own lord. HR has a lot fewer tools than the inquisition. Fear of lawsuits reduces their toolkit even further.

Very true. Unless you have a sick family member. Until the ACA, you were 100% trapped. Now, you’re not officially trapped, only trapped in practice, because when you switch health plans, the providers who have been working with your kid for the last few years are no longer in your network, and... you get the picture.

In the 1950s, employee benefits became non-taxable. Prior to that, employees would get health insurance as individuals and their plans would never be tied to a particular employer, kinda like how it currently works in Switzerland. So that one law drove our entire health insurance system to where it is now.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the serf, I can go find another Lord. I can pit the lords against each other for a better deal. I can try and become my own lord. HR has a lot fewer tools than the inquisition. Fear of lawsuits reduces their toolkit even further.

What if we tried to make it so there were no lords? Just a thought.

You just get much worse lords and lose all your freedoms which you may still have.

Free market democracy is not ideal system, but it offers at least some freedoms for serfs. All other systems take them all away.

Re: HR is not your friend, and other things I think you should know

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. Unless you have a sick family member. Until the ACA, you were 100% trapped. Now, you’re not officially trapped, only trapped in practice, because when you switch health plans, the providers who have been working with your kid for the last few years are no longer in your network, and... you get the picture.

Is there a reason to regularly switch plans? I keep the same one each time annual enrollment comes up.

They were specifically referring to the difficulty of switching companies.
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