One has to be incredibly naive to think HR is on the employee's side. Always follow the money:

Who pay's HR? Company; ergo - if HR is against company, HR gets replaced.

Same for binding arbitration: Who is the arbiter's repeat customer, company or client? company. ergo, if arbiter is not good for them, arbiter gets replaced.

Also, when you buy real estate, some people believe that their agent is looking out for them. However, if you look at the money, one party (buyer) brings money to the table, and three parties (buyer agent, seller agent, seller) take money proportional to the deal amount; Therefore, everyone except buyer wants deal amount to be maximized.

Given that a lot of HR is deliberately duplicitous about this, and that apparently -- still -- other "authority" figures in many young peoples' lives don't address this (every college "career counseling" center in the U.S.: I'm looking at you), I think one bout of naiveté can be excused -- although still preferably avoided.

HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!

Hell, HR often is not even the hiring manager's friend. "Best practices" are often a poor fit to the real world and individual circumstances. Hiring managers often have to jump through hoops to try to get HR to act on the candidates they actually want.

The way to work HR, is to know that -- if they're competent -- they are all about risk management.

So, make what you want also the way they minimize their risk, to the extent you can.

When I left one of my jobs, some of my PTO time had lapsed per a newer "use it or lose it" policy -- this "loss" probably aided by another prior action, lumping "vacation" time and "sick" time into a single pool.

But, I'd done well by my team. And HR didn't want any unnecessary waves. So, they paid it to me, regardless.

It was also a time of enough organizational transition, that this individual action would most likely "get lost in the wash" and not become the basis for another employee claiming unequal treatment.

THAT's how HR works.

They help you, only when it helps them.

The rest is all empty rhetoric. If you buy it, they just gained (gamed) some cheap compliance from you -- that's all.

P.S. As always, individual circumstances may happen to vary. But regardless, go in with your eyes open and your guard up.

What's funny is that people and especially agents will say that they are ethically bound as your agent (the buyer) to help you. Money always trumps ethics unfortunately but I've found very few people who actually seem to understand this.

At least this article gets it right in identifying this as an industry-wide problem instead of narrowing responsibility to a single company. I can only attribute this to the fact that this article was written by an HR professional instead of a journalist, who often confuse cause and effect according to their own personal biases and agendas.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2011/08/the-murray-ge...

Correctly identifying this as an industry-wide problem means that all HR departments get appropriate scrutiny instead of focusing scrutiny on one specific HR department, which has the unfortunate effect of causing society to ignore problems that exist in practically all HR departments.

Yes, yes, it's become a cliche to point this out. (See: every comment posted as of this moment.)

But that's not the real lesson here -- we now see that this stonewalling/gaslighting didn't even help the company, since HR were so hardcore about being so kafkaesque that Uber got stuck with a major PR scandal that cost numerous managers they were ostensibly protecting!

That's a particularly nasty kind of frustration -- not simply when someone opposes your goals, but does it so confusedly that they're hurting themselves in the process and yet you're still powerless to stop it! (Anyone can relate to Fowler's experience if they've had to deal with that kafkaesque, self-hurting bureaucracy "that will make you look bad if anyone actually takes an interest in the case".)

So no, it's not enough to dismiss this case as "HR protects the company,"; that logic wouldn't explain why, in this case, they "protected" the company by doing extremely risky things that could blow up badly.

Does anyone actually think that HR is on their side? :p

They are on your side if you are on the company's side. E.g. sorting out equipment issues, leave requests, forms, etc. If the on-boarding process is little to non-existent, the HR might be someone who takes care of you during the first couple of weeks until you get your wheels turning.

When I was just starting my career, I did. I think a lot of people assume that they are there to help and protect you.

Sniff. I remember when I was young and naive too. Actually, it may have been mostly true thirty years ago, before the workplace became a minefield.

There's nowhere that teaches you this lesson except hard experience. I found out when I was accused of theft by security at my office.

Just like the government...

Frankly I'd trust the government more than I'd trust an HR rep. At least in the government you have people who believe they work for the citizens of the US.

Well perhaps the previous administration anyways...

HR is always on the side of the company. Think Cattle Resources in a farm.

I remember a post that compared it to secret police. First rule in any country with secret police: stay clear of secret police. I can't find it but there are plenty of them. Examples

https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/the-hr-se...

http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2015/11/25/is-hr-the-new...