Can't help but read all of Rachel's posts through a Facebook engineering filter. And, with this post, once you've been on the opposing side of HR, you understand and appreciate her posts.

Everyone expects HR to follow the law but in practice you can see this is applied selectively at many companies.

She quit a while back if I recall from some of her posts about it a few years ago. Additionally this isn't the first time she's had issues at a company and left (if you read further back). That being said, it is still useful knowledge, but probably could be taken with a grain of salt.

They're helpful of employees and managers only insofar as it helps the company. And even then, only insofar as the company values that help. I've never seen HR go to bat for an employee, against either a manager or against the company. The implication that they're not mall cops (but there to make sure workplace law is followed, i.e., they are cops of a sort) is actually quite apropos; they are there to protect the establishment and the status quo. They are not there to help you.

I agree with you the lawyer is leaving out anecdotes and trying to generalize from them, but all you have to do is google for a second to find some incredibly embarrassing messups from HR see microsoft amazon google for examples.

I will challenge you on the part though about the unspoken expectations of what HR is. To be clear, HR always says come to them if I need anything. If I have any problems they are there to help me.

Like you said, this is a lie. They are there to follow the law, and if they see you as a liability and your complaint doesn't have enough evidence and they can get away with finding a way to get rid of you and claim it's not retaliation they will. This happens often.

So perhaps HR should take on some responsibility for actively misadvertising the purpose of their existence. They should say exactly that:

We are not here for you we are here to make sure the company doesn't get in trouble so if on the books we can be in the right and reduce liability we will, so keep your mouth shut and do not give us any reason to think you are a liability to us.

Alot of problems I agree could be solved if HR was honest about their role. And did not advertise themselves as therapists as a way to asses early on if you are a liability and come up with a way to get rid of you and get away with it.

Ironically, HR are often low paid and have a shoddy understanding of employment law.

I suspect this is a response to the about face that MS/Github took recently about firing a Jewish person for saying things like 'Stay safe, Nazis are about'. In the end, someone in HR no longer works for Microsoft but it behooves us all to remember that HR isn't there to protect you.

All her posts are like that. She wants to rant about something, but she doesn't give enough details for you to actually know what she is ranting about. Probably because she doesn't want to 'out' anyone by giving away too many details of the incident. Which is fine, but then why blog about it in the first place if no one outside your circle is going to know what the hell you are talking about?

Easily one of my least favorite blogs that regularly gets linked on hn.

Yeah, the whole post is just fluff and no substance. There are sooo many better articles on this subject. My guess is it's being upvoted by the title alone since people agree with it, and the discussion it has spurred.