That's been my experience too -- after all, HR people are also just trying to do their jobs as well as they can, and if you need something they perceive as their job to provide, they're usually helpful.

But it's important to remember that "representing the company" absolutely can include unethical behavior like stonewalling employees, lying on management's behalf, and slow-walking your requests until they finally time out (by design).

Having experienced that in a big-company context, I would suggest people be very careful and have a Plan B for any HR interaction, especially in time of layoffs. While you're getting hired and set up then HR is probably on your side, to a reasonable approximation, and when they're not your manager will help. After that, never assume they're on your side, or on your manager's side -- HR will absolutely go behind the back of a manager too on behalf of "the Company" (i.e. higher managers).

> 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 to impose anyway.

Yep. And Engineers often have pet projects. Marketing often has a slightly odd artistic vision for something.

People are gonna be people.

Pet projects by any department that aren't in the interests of the company should be discouraged.

Especially by HR, because unlike an engineering pet project that may waste some time, pet projects by HR can significantly impact the quality of life of every employee at the company, cause people not to join the company or quit the company, and so on.

Dysfunctional HR (which is almost all HR) is just about as bad as having a thieving dishonest CFO or a clueless visionless CEO, in terms of its impact on company prospects.

In comparison, a designer who does their work ever so slightly better than is actually going to have business value, or an engineer who puts 10% of their time into some project that they incorrectly think will help the company, or who chooses the 2nd best tool instead of the 1st best tool because the 2nd best one will look better on their resume, these are all much less significant to the company or to their coworkers.

Developer pet projects in the wrong places at tech companies can often negatively impact a very wide portion of the company too. See e.g. companies with internal tooling or security teams can very often force their projects onto others in the company. Needing executive support of course, but so too your your HR newspeak manual if it's actually going to have that kind of impact.

>pet projects by HR can significantly impact the quality of life of every employee at the company, cause people not to join the company or quit the company, and so on

Reminds me of the time I almost rage quit when HR's pet project was to implement a "baking roster" for the purposes of "team building".

Like... No effing way am I spending time baking shit just because you want a supply of freshly baked goods to eat? I'm a software engineer damnit.

Made my blood boil for sure.

At one place, we had a potluck where clearly some people went way above and beyond so we decided that if you don't want to cook, you can just pay USD 20 instead. Those who cooked and baked were clearly spending way over twenty dollars each anyway. That's not a potluck! Anyway, nobody complained anymore after this one change.

A very astute and true point -- however, their unique position and role make HR employees fall into a category I'd argue should be held to a higher standard, precisely because of their outsized potential for impact on the organization.

Pretty true. But that kind of like saying "politicians are going to take bribes, they are just people".

There is the reason why some jobs are treated uniquely, and HR should be one of those jobs, as they have a disproportional amount of power and influence over other people's ability to find employment.

In some countries those special professions are even marked as such in law, for example in Poland there exist a notion of a "public trust profession": "a profession that is a profession of high social importance, requiring appropriate qualifications not only professional and health, but also characterological, i.e. moral and ethical"

I am not particularly keen to enshrine that notion in law, but we should not treat HR so flippantly.

A few years ago I read an article in a business magazine, Forbes or Inc., that surveyed CEOs and found over half of them fear their company's HR department. It seems HR has evolved to be independent of many company's management structure and answerable only to itself.

HR has evolved into political commissars, of the 1918-1924, 1937-1942 variety:

> The political commissar held military rank equaling the unit commander to whom he was attached; moreover, the commissar also had the military authority to countermand the unit-commander's orders at any time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar

Depends on the company. In large companies it's very common for the vast majority of HR matters to be delegated to contractors or fresh out of college hires, with no experience managing people, and little authority.

Anecdotally, it seems to me HR employees are akin to "Party Members" / "Card Carrying Members" of a communist country (forgive the analogy). Usually very zealous about the company, usually have drunk the kool-aid, usually believe all of the lore and the promulgated principles / company guidelines. I'd think the head of state for a communist country would fear most the zealous card-carrying member, vs the apathetic proletariat. The zealous card-carrying member is the most likely to become disaffected once the illusion fades.

edit: seems I wasn't the first to make this connection (beaten by 4 minutes)

HR also plays little tricks during hiring to see if candidate accepts lowball offers. They put pressure for signing offer saying that there are couple other equally good candidates for the same position. PS - I had first hand experience. found out too late that there were no other candidates waiting for offer :|

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.

How do you fire the HR exec when HR itself handles the firings.

The CEO does it. Or the board if they won’t. There’s also someone higher up the tree.

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?

That's the one! Thank you!

And that article mentions this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Equal-Opportunity-Frank-Dob...

Interesting! I overlooked that reference.

Another, more polemical book on the subject would be Christopher Caldwell's Age of Entitlement, which I haven't had a chance to read yet, but from what I understand makes the argument that the 1964 Civil Rights Act caused these issues.

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 that people have about them.

> 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.

> For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening.

Unless of course, the harraser is a top performer, or VIP in their market. Remeber all that fun with Susan Fowler, an engineer at Uber that went public with her harrasment?

Or the ever infamous https://archive.ph/dUJNs

In those cases, like you said, HR protected the interests of the Company, which was in preserving these high performers. And the people who should have been protected, were screwed over.

Though in retrospect given this conversation HR didn’t realize it was more in their interest to help Susan than the top performer

> Susan Fowler, an engineer at Uber

I always had a problem with that case: so you start to work for one of the most unethical companies out there, a company whose business model is to circumvent regulations, a company that built software whose sole purpose was to deceive auditors.

And then you are shocked, shocked, that there is gambling^W unethical behavior going on?

Circumventing corrupt and anti-competitive regulations is not in any way morally equivalent to sexual harassment.

It is if the perpetrator can "circumvent" the consequences.

> For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening.

I agree with this. However, the implementation might not be what the employee would expect. If the victim is moved to another team or fired and the aggressor doesn't face any consequences, the harassment was still stopped, so I guess mission accomplished?

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that if you're in such a position, reach out to HR only after you have secured your own legal protection and never expect nor trust the company to be on your side.

> [If] you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening.

You’d think so, but (as you go on to mention) all too often that interest is mediated through some proxy metric such as legal or publicity risk, which can entail a reaction contrary to your interest: e.g. legal risk might reasonably be thought proportional to your legal budget, which is related to your position in the company, so low-level employees get ignored; or if it’s easy for everybody to get publicity, maybe suspects get fired no matter how slim the evidence (the company is free not to do business, including employment, with whomever they want!), making real claims look less legitimate because a few fake ones are widely known; or legal and publicity risks get mitigated by paying everyone involved to shut up rather than solving the problem; etc.

So far it doesn’t look like proxy metrics imposed by government or popular opinion work all that well.

Sometimes the easiest way to make that 'stop happening' is to force out the person reporting the problem. :/

Also don't forget to take into account short term vs long term goals. Yes a sexual harassment lawsuit is very bad, but that isn't going to happen immediately. So they may chose the short term solution and try to sweep it under the rug.

HR mainly does admin (pay, leaves, etc) and advises management on how to avoid employment-related lawsuits, they also advise on employment market trends (e.g. 'this is what the industry pays for this sort of job so if we want to attract people we need to adjust accordingly').

HR is human beings like everyone else in the company. Having friends in HR is definitely a benefit. Same as having friends anywhere else in the org. Ultimately they will tend to protect themselves as will everyone else. When the bottom line dictates something bad has to happen, they likely don't have the juice to stop it. Same goes for everyone outside HR.

> For example, if you're being harassed, it's very often in the company's interest to stop that happening. It will cause you and perhaps more people to quit if they don't, and there might be legal risk.

Depends. You going to sacrifice a secretary or a engineering manager?

You basically need to try and determine what your value is to the org before going to HR.

Related to the other comment about HR having their own goals...

HR may want to get rid of that engineering manager anyway, so they can be replaced with someone that improves their demographics quotas, I mean targets.

I have actually seen such targets in some OKRs for one or more HR teams, somewhere.

I've never heard of a highly effective engineering manager being replaced to meet a demographic target. I'd be surprised if this has ever happened, much less being an actual industry problem. I could see them replacing an engineering manager, for reasons unrelated to the target, and replacing them with someone that helps move them toward their target -- but those are drastically different things.

I don’t disagree with anything here.

Some people look at them as ‘impartial judges’. They are not. They have to take the side of the company which will result in more success for the company (not necessarily the manager, or upper manager, but rather the company itself).

You're making the assumption that although you're being harassed the best outcome for you and the company are aligned. This is definitely not always the case, if you are being harassed and it happens to be in the best interest for the company to get rid of you, for whatever reason, guess what happens next?

HR will consider downside risk too. It's usually not the whole story to say that getting rid of you will be simple and easy. You might file a lawsuit. Your colleagues might be demoralized. Other teams might start hearing about the situation and protesting in various ways. The government might get involved. It might lead to bad PR.

> guess what happens next?

Lawsuits and bad press.

Are you making the claim that every wrongful termination ends in lawsuits and bad press?

Dubious.

> I think a lot of these sorts of articles discount the idea that your goals and the company's will frequently align.

I have to remind a lot of people that HR is not your friend, but that doesn't mean HR is your enemy.

A lot of young people are reading "HR is not your friend" articles and assume that they need to go to war with HR. I've had to mentor some people out of weird situations where HR was trying to genuinely help them, but they refused to engage with HR at all due to some anecdote or article they read online.

The common examples is being PIPed. A lot of people panic as soon as they see anything resembling a PIP because the internet tells them it's a formality before they're fired. In contrast, many HR departments have metrics and incentives that make them want to retain employees at any cost, because it looks bad on them if they can't retain people or they're hiring people who underperform and can't be brought up to expected levels of performance. Contrary to what the internet says, a lot of PIP programs can actually result in positive improvements and good long term outcomes, but a lot of people just shut down and resent the company too much to even engage once it happens.

‘When HR thinks it’s their job to administrate, you’ve already lost.’

One way to more closely align HR with employees is to focus them on championing a certain set of empowerment values. C-Levels should thus use HR to listen and aggregate employee info, and (importantly) use complimentary soft skills in HR to provide coaching to both high and low performers. This is rare but a feasible vision for a nascent HR org.

The same coaching and development goes for those within HR. Being a BP is really not a long-term career for most. I’ve seen a lot of HR peeps do a rotation for a year or two and then go off to be a founder or transition into very different career tracks. If you treat the HR lower ranks well, that energy can help spread to the rest of the team.

It’s really easy to get this wrong, especially in tech where Founders are poor at soft skills and/or hyper product focused. The OP I feel is a very generous view of the norm. But if you want to form a world-class HR team, there are much higher marks to chase.

Exactly my thought, if a company has lawyers legal-wise, they also has HR social-wise. Same kind of justice