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Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

cdoyle.me

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Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#191

Post by vlod »

rippercushions wrote: post #173
vlod wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're reliant on them, every single HR dept I've hard to deal with (across many companies) has been incompetent. It's too the point I have systems in place to cover their inevitable screw up. e.g. I was living in the US and had to go for a business trip to the UK and my company put up in the Ritz Carlton in London (a very fancy and very expensive hotel, especially during new year). However the HR person thought…

Unless your company is so tiny that the HR person is wearing many hats, the credit limit on your corp credit card is set by the finance team and likely has nothing at all to do with HR. Although a $50 (!?) limit on a credit card sounds more like somebody at the bank fucked up.

Doesn't really matter. If HR are the employee facing 'front' of the company and do all the work of booking flight, hotels, transport etc then the buck stops with them.

i.e. If one is a tech/product team lead with an external client, you can't blame a developer (below you in the food chain) for screwing up. All screens/functionality has to be verified before the client sees it. If not, you'll more than likely look like an idiot.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#192

Post by giraffe_lady »

abeppu wrote: post #59
civilized wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dehumanizing name "Human Resources" says it all, doesn't it? We're not people. We're not even workers. We're just resources that happen to be members of the human species. Similar to other resources like staplers. There's no perfect euphemism for what HR does, but something like... I don't know... Workforce Management? Would be a little less awful, I think?

I think it's a mistake to put much weight on the name. In companies where that department is called "People Ops" or "The People Team", the fundamental responsibilities to the company are unchanged.

people operators

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#193

Post by aeschinder »

I was a manager at a well known .com for several years. HR exists to protect the company from its own employees. That's why you have to sit through mandatory DEI training, sexual harassment training and other indignities. Studies have shown that mandatory training does very, very little to change anyone's mind. It is simply to protect the company in case there is an incident.

As for layoffs, it is always Finance and HR that know about all of the plans before anyone else. HR will try its best to perform layoffs under the guise of "reorganization" of departments or the whole company. This gives them cover to get rid of undesirables, older (read "expensive") employees and other people problems.

Firing people is the hardest thing. It is simplicity itself if you are an executive VP or higher, but below that it takes a ream of paperwork, a performance plan and months-long periods where the employee sabotages work, "quiet quits" and makes things miserable for everyone around them. HR doesn't want to create a scene that might reflect poorly on the company.

I'm super jaded after 30 years in IT so I apologize if this is too negative a response.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#194

Post by amalcon »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #19
frellus wrote: post #10

I get the whole "HR can be evil" point, but this article could have also been, "Having friends in management is fine, but management is not your friend". Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Can we make points and articles about protecting yourself, as an employee, without resorting to such things? As a manager in a company, I've both had friends in HR and also had HR been my friend. Need to fire that…

> Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Personally, I'm so sick of there not being nearly enough cynicism in general. I've met cops that aren't total pieces of shit (who all ended up quitting in less than 5 years), but that doesn't mean cops aren't total pieces of shit. If the nature of the job is unethical, you should rightly call it out as such. HR's job is to pretend to be your friend while doing wha…

Cynicism tends to go hand in hand with defeatism. I have no problem with cynicism, if you're the rare person willing to take steps to fix or mitigate the problems you are cynical about.

In the more common case, it just leads to giving up. Cynicism is a mistake when it leads to inaction, and inaction is responsible for a lot (arguably most) of the world's problems. I've known people who didn't recycle because they were (maybe still are, we've lost touch) cynical about whether enough other people would do it to matter. The cynicism is getting in the way of action.

No, I don't have a suggestion for what to do about abuse of employees! I know this is not the most helpful, but I'm not the cynic about this. I'm a cynic about other things, but only when I do have a course of action.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#195

Post by rjtavares »

xcambar wrote: post #182
rjtavares wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone working in HR for the last few years, this is the most correct take. I would add that people working in HR - like any other area - have their own goals, and you should also take that in consideration. Sometimes they don't align at all with the organization. BTW, it's really funny reading all these takes thinking HR people are evil. Almost as funny as talking to HR that are completely oblivious to the idea…

> HR that are completely oblivious to the idea that people have about them. I can't imagine that's the typical HR pattern. That's certainly not better but I tend to think that they appear oblivious by design, or rather, by education. Since HR must keep their smiling poker face and their never-promising aleays-optimistic discourse no matter what, they fake this seemingly oblivious character. I guess.

It's not the typical HR pattern, but there are some genuine oblivious people that amuse me greatly.

Like you said, the best ones are masters of poker face: polite and toned-down.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#196

Post by lliamander »

criley2 wrote: post #77
epicureanideal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HR represents the company. Where your goals and the company's aligns HR very often does not even work in the interests of the company. Instead, it works in the interest of the HR employees' own political beliefs, which they then cloak in the language of doing what's right for the company, and connect no matter how loosely to any laws, regulations, etc. that they can use to justify imposing the beliefs they wanted t…

HR going rogue with political nonsense (I can only imagine some libertarian HR telling everyone 'deal with it yourselves!' lol) is not the fault of that HR, it's the fault of incompetent executives. The issue is never one individual, it's a broken system letting a single individual negatively influence it.

It's not entirely the executives' fault. The ambiguities in civil rights law mean that often one has to employ a more politically radical HR department to shield against lawsuits.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#197

Post by rippercushions »

vlod wrote: post #191
rippercushions wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your company is so tiny that the HR person is wearing many hats, the credit limit on your corp credit card is set by the finance team and likely has nothing at all to do with HR. Although a $50 (!?) limit on a credit card sounds more like somebody at the bank fucked up.

Doesn't really matter. If HR are the employee facing 'front' of the company and do all the work of booking flight, hotels, transport etc then the buck stops with them. i.e. If one is a tech/product team lead with an external client, you can't blame a developer (below you in the food chain) for screwing up. All screens/functionality has to be verified before the client sees it. If not, you'll more than likely look lik…

I've never worked in a company where HR does flight and hotel bookings. Just how many people work in your company? Or are you using "HR" to refer broadly to everybody working in any type of administrative role?

In my (typical) company, HR sets travel policy but everything else about travel, down to approving expense reports, is outsourced to vendors or other departments.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#198

Post by marcosdumay »

t43562 wrote: post #90

You Americans brought us the term "Human Resources" which used to be "Personnel" after all. :-) OK I'm joking!!! I don't really know whose fault it is that we are considered "human things" now instead of "people" but it does beautifully demonstrate the attitude that we are like the office printer or the factory machinery but more finickety. I think it's being public that screws things up the most - there is no loyalt…

> OK I'm joking!!! I don't really know whose fault it is that we are considered "human things" now instead of "people"

Just looked at the Wikipedia, and turns out Taylor was born on the US. I always assumed he was British. Almost all the fault for creating the idea falls between him and Ford. The fault for spreading it falls on management schools.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#199

Post by horns4lyfe »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #111
acover wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the nature of being a cop unethical? I agree there are abuses of the power but from what I've seen in real life it's important work.

I should mention I am referring specifically to police in the United States. The short answer is because cops defend cops, including bad cops. People like to say it's just a few bad apples, but it's far more prevalent than that. And even if it were just 1 in 100, the fact that the cops band together to protect a rapist/murderer/whatever shows that they care more about unity than morals. I realize this answer is lacki…

None of that means the nature of the work is unethical, it just means it’s done poorly. I think the majority of hacker news users world do very poorly in an unpoliced country, even without the police we have now.

Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend

#200

Post by epicureanideal »

lliamander wrote: post #196
criley2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR going rogue with political nonsense (I can only imagine some libertarian HR telling everyone 'deal with it yourselves!' lol) is not the fault of that HR, it's the fault of incompetent executives. The issue is never one individual, it's a broken system letting a single individual negatively influence it.

It's not entirely the executives' fault. The ambiguities in civil rights law mean that often one has to employ a more politically radical HR department to shield against lawsuits.

I was looking for a link I know exists about this. Do you happen to know the very long article, or maybe book that was written about this topic?
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