Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
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Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#2As CTO it always was mine and I invested lots of time for good relationships - E.g. visited them everyday for some minutes. But I might have experienced only good and helpful HR departments which were highly interested in people development. The only time I got real trouble was when the head of HR suggested I lay off half of the department (but even then I could change the number way down with cancelling all freelancer contracts and some investments).
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#3As CTO it always was mine and I invested lots of time for good relationships - E.g. visited them everyday for some minutes. But I might have experienced only good and helpful HR departments which were highly interested in people development. The only time I got real trouble was when the head of HR suggested I lay off half of the department (but even then I could change the number way down with cancelling all freelanc…
As a C-level executive, HR does represent you. You are the company (in part). If you are on the board, even more so.
For a rank-and-file employee, the interests are divergent. HR represents the company. Even for those who have the ability to hire and fire, HR is only aligned with your interests to the extent that your interests are the interests of the company.
(However, fun fact: at many companies, only the CEO has authority to hire and fire. All such personnel decisions go through an HR-mediated process, and the CEO makes the final call.)
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#4> Your employer definitely got legal advice on anything they put in front of you, why shouldn’t you do the same before signing?
Because it costs $700/hour
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#5Prior to going out on my own at a precociously young age, my time in corporate America (~3.5 years) was fairly brief, and less than half of it spent at companies large enough to have an HR apparatus in any meaningful sense.
I always found their seeming double-agent role confusing and ambiguous in a slightly sinister way, even as they preached that they were there for us workforce people if we needed anything.
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#6I disagree with the "mostly harmless" take in the article.
HR is the group everyone, regardless of where they stand in a company, must be the most careful in dealing with. They are beurocrats and, in modern western companies, are becoming ideological commissars.
One of the strongest suggestions I would make to anyone going into white collar work is to avoid HR as much as possible, and be extremely careful of everything you say to them when you do interact with them. For leaders, be very careful about how you let HR grow. Keep it as small as possible and do not let it get into the business of controlling your culture.
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#7Companies in general aren't anyone's friend, in that, ideally, a company is a machine designed to make money within the constraints of law and the ethical rules the leadership decides to follow.
Companies, like nations, have no friends, only interests.
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#8Prior to going out on my own at a precociously young age, my time in corporate America (~3.5 years) was fairly brief, and less than half of it spent at companies large enough to have an HR apparatus in any meaningful sense. I always found their seeming double-agent role confusing and ambiguous in a slightly sinister way, even as they preached that they were there for us workforce people if we needed anything.
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?
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#9> Your employer definitely got legal advice on anything they put in front of you, why shouldn’t you do the same before signing? Because it costs $700/hour
If you're hiring a top law firm. Plenty of lawyers can be had for $100/hour and are well qualified to review employment terms.
Re: Having friends in HR is fine, but HR is not your friend
#10I 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 horrible employee who is demoralizing the team and not being productive? HR is your friend. Need to hire the next best engineer? HR is my friend.
Have I seen horrible, Catbert-like HR managers and people? Of course. In all levels of an organization, people can be horrible. Why round everything up to the cynical points just to get clicks?