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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

#411

Post by guenthert »

nojvek wrote: post #376

> Performance reviews are a joke because almost nobody knows how to measure anyone else's effectiveness. They are just a continuation of the same popularity contests you thought you left behind from middle school, high school, and maybe even your college/university days. This has a bit of truth. In my experience climbing up the ladder is so disconnected from actual reality. There’s quite a bit of a buddy buddy / quid…

> It also baffles me how much energy is spent on hiring people, vs mentoring and fostering them so they grow and are promoted.

I used to be baffled by that too (and frustrated when they hired someone from outside, when we had IMHO better candidates in-house). However the alternative leads to the Peter Principle, won't it (I've seen that too and the result was worse)?

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

#412

Post by stjohnswarts »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #291
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. Just to be more specific, HR is an agent of your company. Their job is to make every interaction resolve in favor of the company. Often, this is a good thing for you, because when things are running smoothly, a lot of the stuff that is good for the employees is good for the company. The important part to always remember is that when there is a clear conflict, a situation…

Exactly, they are legally bound to do what is best for the company while they only have to "sort of" give consideration for your situation.

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

#413

Post by stjohnswarts »

firstSpeaker wrote: post #277
ncmncm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the starry-eyed, optimistic view of workplaces. In fact, in each case management works for themselves. HR, most of all. While engineering management has some pressure toward development goals, sales toward sales targets, and top management toward business development, HR has no such objective targets. Typically they even farm out recruiting. What motivates HR management? In most companies, HR is the center of…

My experience with HR is not that bad :-). Dealt with them in few occasions and I found them to be helpful, at least from where I was looking at the subject. I can totally agree that they are not competent and not dedicated, as far as my personal experience goes. But the corruption I have not seen.

They can be extremely helpful IF your needs are in line with the needs of the company, but if your needs are not then they're not going to be so nice.

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

#414

Post by eeZah7Ux »

dhekir wrote: post #323
baby wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you get a long term visa without any job affiliations? I'm not sure that simply having the money is sufficient reason for an European country to give you a long-term visa (> 1 year), depending on which country you come from. Also, some countries have a "negative privilege" situation, where even if you try to get a low-wage job, you'll have less priority than others, or your employer will need to pay an extra fee…

> "negative privilege"

I think that is called "discrimination"

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

#415

Post by pnw_hazor »

hypervisorxxx wrote: post #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 complai…

When I used to do employee-side employment law, the story of almost every client or potential client included a visit to HR that preceded workplace retaliation and/or termination.

Back in the day my first tech job was at a startup. The VP of Engineering was the first person to tell me to never be loyal to a company. This came up in a one-on-one meeting where we were discussing a pending merger with a larger corp. I began to mumble something about wanting to be loyal to the company and he immediately cut me off to tell me to never be loyal to a company, including the one we both were in at the time.

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

#416

Post by stjohnswarts »

FabHK wrote: post #345
rmk wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the most heavily mismanaged places I have worked at have been startups. All sorts of insane people, particularly at management level, but also rank-and-file. Large companies have standardized interview and background checking processes on top of fairly standard requirements of candidates (educational qualification etc.) that work to root out pyschopaths and just plain weirdos, most of the time. No such luck a…

I seem to recall studies that upper management in large companies has about 2.5x as many sociopaths as the general population.

In particular CEOs

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

#417

Post by stjohnswarts »

jiggawatts wrote: post #14

Many people think that they live in a free democracy. In reality, something like 50% of all working people are employed in a strict hierarchical organisation that is essentially feudal in its nature. Most employees are the equivalent of serfs, overseen by lords, with a king in charge. The common employees don't get a vote. Their managers are not elected. They don't get a say in policy. The managers in turn form a str…

your analogy falls apart at "serfs".

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

#418

Post by eeZah7Ux »

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.

No, HR works entirely and exclusively for the company. Just like the lawyer working for the opposing party in a process.

If you want an "HR" on the employee side that thing is called "union"

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

#419

Post by curioussavage »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #344
_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 grew up "how am I going to eat?" poor, and I find i'm the opposite with work and money. I take risks, see it all as one big game because I know being poor isn't the end of the world. It is really shit, but i'll survive it. I know what it is like.

Do you have a family to provide for? Good health? Financially stable and healthy extended family?

We all have different inherited capacities for stress too.

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

#420

Post by vinay_ys »

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'…

> We've actually used CMS to improve recruitment and retention of engineers in an organization.

Would you mind revealing which organization? And how long have they managed to sustain these values? It would be super interesting to learn more about their industry, the size of the engineering org, how much product features get built in a given year etc.

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