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

rachelbythebay.com

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

#301

Post by mcv »

_nrv9 wrote: post #90
firecall wrote: post #73

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…

> "I am always terrified of losing my job."

I stopped fearing that when I became a freelancer. It's done wonders for my confidence, and I'm much more productive as a result.

It also helps to be married; two jobs give a lot more security than one. Even so, having savings that can last you through a downturn or possibly even fund an early retirement, is definitely a good idea.

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

#302

Post by lb1lf »

d--b wrote: post #284

HR is neither your friend nor it is some evil secret police that’s here to root out the saboteurs in your company... HR is an agent between you and the company. It’s there to run the negotiations between what the company wants and what you want. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to use HR to your benefit. HR is there for you to ask stuff. You want a shower on your floor? Ask them. You want a course in R…

> HR is an agent between you and the company. It’s there to run the negotiations between what the company wants and what you want. If you don’t understand that, you won’t be able to use HR to your benefit.

-I like to think of HR as an abstraction layer between management and employees, whose basic function is to shield management from having to interact with the employees.

Also, HR receives its pay from the company, not their coworkers - so HR is very much an agent of the company, not you. (Which is fair - after all, their loyalty is with whoever pays them, which is not unreasonable)

That being said, there is good HR and bad HR out there - just don't think that HR is there for you; they're not.

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

#303

Post by mcv »

pugworthy wrote: post #208
drstewart wrote: post #43

IT is not your friend either. They work for the company, not for you. Legal is not your friend either. They work for the company, not for you. Janitorial staff is not your friend either. They work for the company, not for you. Sales is not your friend either. They work for the company, not for you. Marketing is not your friend either. They work for the company, not for you.

So who is your friend? Your team? I mean they work for the company, not you.

I really hope you have friends outside the company.

Your team is not automatically your friend. They are your coworkers (as is your boss and anyone else in the company). It's possible for friendships to grow there, but it's not common.

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

#304

Post by nice2meetu »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #137
_nrv9 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I 100 percent empathise with this thinking pattern. I grew up in a poor family that struggled to find enough money. My endless fear is being unemployed, struggling to find a job, and sliding back to that dark place 15 years ago. Some would call that motivation for working harder, I still feel it as fear, and as a result, I do everything I can to acquire the resources to save me from that ever happening. Great thought…

We never had much money growing up, but in Australia it was never a problem. Sort of the opposite - with tall poppy syndrome, you sort of looked down on those too well off and out of touch or stuck up. Rather, I had 100% confidence I could grow up, get a good job, retire some day. Focusing on the end meant you missed the journey sort of thing. Pretty care free.

But I later spent some time in rich Asian cities and became aware of the high stress highly competitive environment there, all the way from early schooling. Now I am in the Bay Area and see the same sort of thing here, with there being such a huge difference in potential just by getting in the right schools or doing well on the right exams or interviews. Then things like this health care trap in the US is such a big shock. Even schooling, with such a huge difference between good and bad schools, good and bad neighborhoods. I can see why there is such a desire to better, or even maximize, ones situation.

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

#305

Post by J-dawg »

baby wrote: post #278
akmarinov wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about Thailand and it really depends on your lifestyle, but 100k will get you through 2-3 years at most in the other countries, if you live in an urban setting, not really pinching pennies.

I can tell you that you can live in the center of a French city for like 10 years on that money. You won’t have a crazy lifestyle but you can live in the center and do groceries and the occasional restaurants and drinks for that money. Most people would take like 5 years to make that much AT LEAST.

Plus you can extend that period of time significantly (or even indefinitely) by doing some form of work, even if not highly paid. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

I really like the idea of "barista FIRE": make enough "fuck you money" that you can survive on a low paid job and supplement it a little with your savings, while leaving enough in reserve for retirement.

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

#306

Post by mcv »

irjustin wrote: post #21

Agreed with one small correction, HR is your friend before you join the company simply because internal recruiters fall under HR and recruiters are your friends. Literally paid to try and place you into the company. Back to topic - HR is a tool. Their job is to keep the company from getting sued by employees, the government and sometimes unions over bad practices. If the company is large enough they also report to th…

> "recruiters are your friends"

They are not. They may act like it, but they represent the company they work for, and ultimately their own interests. Some recruiters have enough integrity to be honest with you, but some don't.

If you want to know who you can trust, you need to know what motivates them. You can trust they will act in those interests. You can trust them to act in your interest when your interests align.

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

#307

Post by klodolph »

digitaltrees wrote: post #283
klodolph wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that people without power do not exist? Or are you saying that when someone does not have power, it is their fault? I am not sure you are saying either of these things, but I am finding it difficult to make any kind of charitable reading of this comment. Positive thinking only gets you so far. When taken TOO FAR, positive thinking becomes a delusion. We with loving families can thoughtlessly & brutishl…

I am saying that assuming or accepting you have no power or less power than others is a sure way to create that reality. Are there limits. Sure. But there are countless examples of people that created more than society would have “allowed”. Put another way. Ignore inequality as it effects you, assume you can overcome it. But acknowledge its existence with respect to others and do everything in your power to create eq…

> Ignore inequality as it effects you, assume you can overcome it. But acknowledge its existence with respect to others and do everything in your power to create equality.

This sounds hopelessly inconsistent to me. Why should I hold myself to a different standard than I hold other people to? If acknowledging inequality elsewhere is required to be kind to other people, that means that ignoring inequality when it affects me is being unkind to myself.

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

#308

Post by vaduz »

scoutt wrote: post #247
hypervisorxxx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend and I (both females) one the CEO of a tech company and me a Staff Engineer, have talked about how to do HR right and we came up with an idea but havnt done anything with it. Since HR is clearly biased towards the companies and this has proven to cause a lot of problems, they will never side with you over the company if the company is indeed wrong. HR should ideally be an independent third party and all issu…

A 3rd party HR department is still being paid by the company... If you want something 3rd party that can be impartial ("sometimes", in quotes) and sit on a table with both company and employee, that's unions.

Unions are not impartial - their power in the company is proportional to the number of unionised employees, so they have an incentive to take your side if you are a member - and against you if you are not. It's more complicated in practice, but impartial they are not.

Arbitration may be impartial ("sometimes"), court system may be impartial ("sometimes") - but you still have to be represented by someone who can navigate these systems.

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

#309

Post by lifeisstillgood »

NotPavlovsDog wrote: post #272
zeeed wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experienc…

I am writing an MA thesis on cultural conflict between engineers and management. I would suggest reading works from the field of CMS - critical management studies. You can find lots of articles available, with no paywalls, through google scholar. I would start with Alvesson's work on CMS. We've actually used CMS to improve recruitment and retention of engineers in an organization. I subscribe to hard realism. We can'…

A lot of those things are hard to achieve - we would all, I think, like to hear more about how.

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

#310

Post by lliamander »

firecall wrote: post #73
ser0 wrote: post #42

HR is not your friend and your company is not your family. Regardless of intent there are commercial realities that exist within the context of a company that may never be present in a non-work relationship. This has varying degrees of impact on the nature of the relationship itself and may not present itself until you are at your most vulnerable. I find that a collegial environment with shared goals and responsibili…

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!

A job is work you do for money.

A career is a story we use to guide how we look for work and to convince people to pay us for our work.

The important thing is to not let an employer define you career story, even if you work for them for a long time.

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