Hacker News Reader

Comment by anotherangrydev | Hacker News Reader

Rich, you know what dignity is? Dignity is being the same person disregarding the situation where you're currently involved.

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.

View on HN

> Politely but firmly told her ... Fuck off

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.

You missed one word - "politely". One can be polite and still convey the intended message :-) She obviously got it, hence the revenge.

I didn't miss the word. I just don't believe it's accurate. If the intended message was "fuck off", there's no polite way to deliver that. You might deliver it without literally saying the words, but if the meaning is intact, you're not being polite.

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!"

My developer friend had to work with a program/product manager from hell. They hated each other's guts from the minute they met. He was tasked by the CTO with implementing new software and kept asking her for definitive requirements. She never came up with them and told him to propose something based on some loose, very high-level requirements. When he did, she critiqued the solutions in a meeting attended by many people. He never said it, but made it clear (not in the meeting) that she was incompetent/lazy, which she was, in many co-worker's eyes. She tried to get him fired several times (unsuccessfully, my friend was really good and the CTO would not do it).

Not one impolite word was ever spoken (I know for sure, I was there in most meetings).

Sometimes it is just "bad chemistry".

Sure. Bad chemistry happens. And in that instance, it sounds like bad chemistry with a bad person. But if your friend had been "politely" telling this woman to fuck off, then I'd have to say that he was at least contributing to the bad relationship.

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?

OMG, the level of bad faith in your comments is astounding. Do you know 'anotherangrydev' personally? Or do you have a link to some resource which is objective and makes his "contributing to the bad relationship" more probable?

Sure - it takes two to tango. My friend from the story above definitely does not suffer fools gladly :-)

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 just don't believe it's accurate.

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.

> I have no idea why would you accuse GP of lying.

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.

What a time to be alive. Telling someone to mind her own business is considered rude.

Out of curiosity, which bucket does your case fall into?

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.

Always had bad experiences with HR, with around 6-7 different companies. Talking with colleagues on the same industry and others found out that my experiences are not isolated incidents, but quite the opposite they've observed pretty similar things. And finally, have a few friends that work themselves into HR and outsourcing (for SAP & Oracle) so I can speak for that environment pretty well, it is a rotten field. And yeah I'm extrapolating from that.

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 find it odd that you have so many bad experiences with HR at so many different companies, largely because I don't see why you're interacting so much with HR. I've rarely interacted with HR except when I've needed something from them. Why are you, as a dev, crossing paths with HR so often? A bad interaction with HR for me would be someone being rude, or unhelpful, or at worst incompetent. I don't understand why your interactions with HR seem to involve risk to your job. e.g. Why was an HR person even talking to you on your break?

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.

How many different HR departments?

Three

It's been stated by many posters in this thread that HR is not your friend; they are not there to protect you, but to protect the company from you; and avoid going to HR with any problem you may have.

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.

> Coming from multiple sources, I'd say that's pretty damning to HR.

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.

Normally I would steer clear of interjecting in something like this, however, you know that's basically the opposite of what dignity means, right? Dignity is recognizing the formality of a situation and acting respectfully to yourself and others in it.

> I see you standing here as a person who is always polite and correct...

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.

No, dignity is not being the same person regardless of the situation. An asshole who is always an asshole doesn't have dignity, he's just an asshole.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com