>Hmm I've worked in a startup that had around 80 people when I joined and they claimed to have no HR. Guess what? They totally had HR. It was just one person whose job wasn't officially HR

Still refutes kristianc's/Cowen's case, about a company absolutely needing HR so much that "one which does not have an adequately staffed HR department, or perhaps does not have an HR department at all" is in serious trouble.

Apparently the company can servive not just with an understaffed HR deparment, but even with no HR department at all. Even with just a person (as in your example) unofficially doing some related tasks part time, alongside their real main role (which is not the same case as "having HR but just calling it something else - for starters it's just an ocassional task, and second it's not formal nor seen in some aggrandizing view).

And not only survive, but, if I get you story right expand to 80 people, and from there to 400 people, before even setting up an actual HR department.

The parent quotes Tyler writing: "let him [the person considering much of HR redundant] spend a year managing a mid-size organization, say 60-80 employees, but one which does not have an adequately staffed HR department, or perhaps does not have an HR department at all. Then let him report back to us."

Well, I've discussed various stages of the companies growth with the people managing such companies, and the lack of HR was never considered a problem. And if they lied to me, considered the objective proof of that: if it was they'd have prioritized creating one, like they had estalibshed other departments, but they never cared of it. One only did it in the end, after getting close to 120 people, to appease potential buyers.

So this "let him manage one (...) and report back to us", as if this will make him see the error of his idea, is already shot down by that. People have managed more than one, and never saw the issue even with not having a HR at all, much less with having an adequately stuffed one.

Depends how broadly you define HR. The company I work for has hr but their role is pretty limited. Payroll is handled by accounts. Recruitment is mostly done by hiring managers. Day-to-day issues are handled by line managers and office managers. Most onboarding comes from a health and safety manager and QA leads. The vast majority of people doing these kind of duties report to someone other than HR.

The core duty of the actual HR team is looking after executives. Providing advice and managing the relationship between directors and employees. And acting as a lever for instilling "behaviours" in the workforce. It creates distance.

You forgot wage suppression

>Who do you think deals with payroll and pensions

In the several mid-sized companies I know of, the accounting department deals with the payroll. Nobody deals with pensions, that's not a company concern in those countries.

>and hiring and firing and contracts and complaints and m/paternity leave and ....

Nobody special. Each team gets to ask for hiring positions, some C-level gives them a number of alloted slots, they do the interviews and decide on some people, and get a final approval for the hire. The contracts are standard issue, done once with the help of the company's lawyers and re-used as templates. Firing is done in a similar fashion. Same for m/paternity leaves. Regular leave days are just claimed through the intranet system, and approved by the immediate team leader, out of a total of X vacation days (which can vary with the seniority). Team leaders are trusted to just approve their own vacations, they don't need to bother anyone.

As for complaints, people take them to their team leader, and if that's not resolved (or the issue is the team leader themselves), they can check with a higher exec. The role of HR in big companies is for ass saving: to avoid those executives having to deal with this directly. If your company is not yet a big faceless blob, this is not needed.

And that's it. For a company of around 100, that's like a few days of checking these, alongside other things, from team leaders every hiring-spurt period.