Honestly, I haven't met one decent guy in HR in a loooong time. Quite the contrary, I have plenty of bad experiences with HR that made me believe those things. I'll give you my favorite examples:
I once got fired because I told some bitch (she was really a bitch, and that's not just my opinion, the whole workplace thought of that) to mind her own business. I was on a break and reading a magazine when she came in and started lecturing me on to "why I'm not doing other stuff? why do I read those kinds of magazines? (It was a gossip magazine, but who cares it was what it was nearby) I'm a little old for that." Politely but firmly told her something like "This is my break. Fuck off, you can't tell me what to do on my break and I read whatever I want to". She left. Three months later got called to get fired, turns out she was secretly raising reports about me that were small stuff (and completely fake) like "... was asked to do X and refused", "... yelled at a client", "... reads magazines while at work (of course)". When I had like 10 or so of them she fired me because of a "bad overall attitude" and those were her (fake) proofs. That's the kind of shit HR LOVES to do man.
Another one. I once knew (but not as in "a friend told me", I saw it) of a place where all the candidates that got hired were because they were laying down with the girl that ran the interviews. Later when they got the job, they started to get fired when that girl found them not sexually appealing anymore. Yup.
I think there has to be something psychological behind that, because other while other teammates may be assholes your job does not depend direclty on them or you are pretty much at the same level. Since HR is above you and can fire you at will there is a lot of power bestowed to only one side of the parts involved. I think it may be some kind of Stanford Prison stuff right there. Sorry to call it mate but your field is a rotten one.
I also wonder if part of the problem is that HR leaders have (broadly speaking) traditionally been 'town planners' when you really need a mix of 'pioneers' and 'settlers' in there too. E.g. don't put a town planner in charge of culture & retention, and don't put a settler in charge of healthcare & benefits compliance.
(Ref: http://blog.gardeviance.org/2012/06/pioneers-settlers-and-to...)
In that one line I think there's two issues you might want to think about.
First of all, you're passing judgement apparently without empathising with where she's coming from. If you try to empathise with people rather than letting your amygdala control your response then you'll find life gets much easier.
Secondly, that language crosses the line of acceptability, both in the workplace and on HN. It's fine in a bar or wherever, but in the workplace it makes your audience percieve immaturity and poorly-controlled anger (whether it's there or not), and will make people in your workplace uncomfortable.
Both of those issues raise flags in my mind as things an HR person should pay serious attention to. Ideally they'd be looking to solve the problem first, but getting people to change is hard and company cultures can be fragile.
Just my two cents.
I see you standing here as a person who is always polite and correct, with a perfect vocabulary and behavior for even the most adverse situations in life. I really, really hope your life crosses path with a woman like that one and you end up in a situation like mine. I would like to see you handle the same situation with the morals you claim to have. Until that moment you will know, for yourself, if you really are the person you claim to be on real life or if the intention behind your comment was just to impress a bunch of people in an anonymous forum.
Best luck.
Your story makes you sound abrasive and unpleasant. If the story played out the way you tell it, she obviously was a bad actor and did something terrible. (And yes, there are definitely some people who will play control games with any little bit of power they gain.) It's difficult to sympathize with you, though, when even your telling of the story makes you sound difficult to work with.
If you're presenting yourself this way in a work environment (or anywhere, really), you will create negative interactions.
I also don't believe a politely delivered message can result in a 3-month plot filled with false reports, culminating in job termination. How does that play out? "Wow, he's so polite all the time! I'll fuck him over anyway because I'm pure evil! And I've got nothing better to do, so I'll keep at it for months!"
Not one impolite word was ever spoken (I know for sure, I was there in most meetings).
Sometimes it is just "bad chemistry".
I feel like anotherangrydev is more likely than not "contributing to the bad relationship" in his (or her) work environments. When someone has multiple bad interactions with HR, at multiple companies, it starts to look like they're the problem and not HR. Why are they having so many interactions with HR at all? Or was there just one bad experience that they're extrapolating to "99%" of HR employees?
But there is quite a bit of politics/plain stupidity in (bigger) corporations. Should reasonable people just keep quiet and suffer abuse? [my friend WAS reasonable wrt work- he tried his best to get the job done]
I have no idea why would you accuse GP of lying. You don't know him. Do you routinely judge if a person tells the truth based on some words he used?
Also, you confuse the GP's feelings about the situation right now with his attitude back then. Back when it happened, he didn't know of a 3 months long plot against him. Now he does know. He was shown the (obscenity censored because it would apparently alter the meaning of my post) documents, he read it black on white. Just before getting fired, too. It's nothing strange that his wording now is emotional and blunt, it says nothing about how he was back then.
Lastly, of course, there are polite ways of telling people to censored, you know why off politely. It's what assertiveness is all about. There are people, however, who don't really care about the form: they just can't stand others disagreeing with them. I don't think it's that rare a trait. How about that line of thinking:
"He's too polite, he's trying to hide something. And he dared to disagree with me, his superior. More than once! I don't have the time to deal with a time-bomb like him, which can blow up behind my back at any time. I need an army of easily controlled people to help me further my career. Yeah, it would be safer to spend a few minutes more and slip a couple of lies when working on his evaluations."
Preparing reports which are not true, yet are not outright lies, and which make some person look really bad doesn't really take much time. Especially if one does it for a living.
He claims that he "politely" told someone to "fuck off". It's not really a question of lying, but a question of possibility. You can't politely tell someone to fuck off. Either you didn't tell them to fuck off or you didn't do it politely. "Fuck off" is not polite. It's not supposed to be polite. If you politely ask someone to leave you alone, you're not telling them to fuck off.
> Do you routinely judge if a person tells the truth based on some words he used?
Not that it's really relevant, but yes. How else would you judge a person's truthfulness except through the words they use? Your words matching the facts is basically the definition of truth.
Do you routinely assume that everything anyone claims is accurate?
> Also, you confuse the GP's feelings about the situation right now with his attitude back then.
No, I'm reading his description of what happened. He gives two versions, one of which (fuck off) is intrinsically unpolite. The other (mind your own business) is pretty rude, too. Given his descriptions in general, it's hard to imagine that this was actually a polite exchange.
It's also difficult to believe that his politeness was rewarded by months of revenge plotting and spite. It would be easier to believe this if he presented this as an isolated story. Instead he presents this as an example of how terrible "99%" of HR employees are. So either 99% of HR employees are actually pointlessly spiteful and terrible, or he's intentionally lying, or he has had so many bad interactions that he believes it to be true. If it's the last case, I've got to wonder if the problem is really all of HR or if it's the one guy who keeps having problems with HR.
1. You've had numerous bad experiences with HR across multiple companies, leading you to label "99%" of HR as rotten.
2. You've had one or two bad experiences with HR, and you're extrapolating from that and just assuming that 99% of HR is rotten.
3. Some other option I don't see.
I can tell you something, I probably talked about this subject at least 100 times during my "professional life" with many different people, I have yet to hear a good experience from someone regarding their HR department.
Mind sharing yourself which bucket do you fall into?
I fall into the bucket that hasn't had bad experiences with HR. They've been helpful when I've needed stuff, which has been minimal. They've been irrelevant the rest of the time. This has been the case at every company I've worked for.
That's it's better to leave, if you can, than go to HR.
Coming from multiple sources, I'd say that's pretty damning to HR.
About Amazon.. I've never worked there. But I know people who have. I believe the NYT article.
I'd say that a thread full of people griping about HR is not very damning at all. People like to gripe. People who have normal interactions with HR generally don't have much to say in this kind of thread. People who have had a bad experience with HR are happy to vent. If multiple sources complaining is damning, then just about every mid to large-size company must be terrible, because just about every company of size has at least a handful of people (consumers or employees, really) who are delighted to tell you about how horrible their experience with the company was.
I agree that HR is not your friend, and their job is to protect the company. That's logically pretty reasonable since they are employed by the company. Likewise, the sales team is there for the company. And so is the customer service team. And so is the executive team. And so is everyone else, because that's who pays them. That doesn't make them evil or rotten, though. Nor are they evil or rotten just because a few bad people are employed there. Some devs are petty assholes, too.
Nope. I've had more than my fair share of disagreements, personal failures, and shameful moments. I've lost friends. I massively fumbled my first management position.
When something happens and your professionalism slips, either you can brush yourself off, accept your mistakes, and try to learn from them, or you can blame others, make excuses, and learn nothing.
So far, your analysis of the situation has loudly blamed the "bitch" and the entire profession of HR, and not once has your critical gaze fallen onto yourself. Apparently they're all wrong, and you are right.
You can try to goad me about my motives for replying and wish me misfortune, but it doesn't change anything.
why?
Having met at least 50+ people in HR who aren't what like you say, i'm going to call complete bullshit on this. I don't think you have anywhere near the kind of data to generalize an entire profession across all industries :)
The vast majority of people i've met who feel like you do are people who were, IMHO fired pretty fairly, but are ashamed to admit that maybe they weren't performing as well as they think, so they blame the system.
>I don't think you have anywhere near the kind of data to generalize an entire profession across all industries :)
>The vast majority of people i've met who feel like you do are people who were, IMHO fired pretty fairly, but are ashamed to admit that maybe they weren't performing as well as they think, so they blame the system.
We're gonna need a source for that too! Or wait, were you discrediting one opinion with another one?
>"Stay clear of HR, that is true for 99% of jobs."
>Having met at least 50+ people in HR who aren't what like you say, i'm going to call complete bullshit on this.
Ever knew of what the '%' sign means? I can get you 50+ people that are in jail and that were later proved to be innocent. Does that mean we should set all of them free?
Waiting for your downvote or a reasonable argument :^)
I said "i've met". I never claimed it was anything else? Unlike you, who flat out stated 99% of HR ....
You know what, it's not worth having this discussion with you. Given your responses here and elsewhere, you come off as very abrasive and not a person i'd want to work with.
But please, keep going on through life believing it's everyone else.