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Comment by mhuffman | Hacker News Reader

Basically the entire time I was getting a business degree the word "employee" was never even used! Just different forms of "human resources" or "workers".

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Exactly. It seems that the current trend is to dehumanize folks as much as possible. Nevermind the fact that businesses are made of people, and they SERVE people, and not just their shareholders.

In fact, if anything, shareholders need to take a back seat on the list of priorities.

The problem is the investors, they don't like companies that has zero growth rate even if it is profitable. Profitable companies that has zero growth rate are used as collateral for loans to buy growing companies with negative profits and this bankrupts the profitable company because of debt burden. It seems greed is too much in the capital markets.

What you described is stupidity, not greed. Stupid investors get their capital taken away.

Shareholders literally own the company and thus hold all the strings.

Your point regarding business = people stands though

> Shareholders literally own the company and thus hold all the strings.

This implication doesn't have to be true though - it's a political choice.

There are (well developed) countries in which worker representatives have a significant amount of board vote shares by law, usually applicable to companies beyond a certain size.

My understanding is that in those nations, non-shareholders have board representation, not voting control. I.e. they have people on the board to hear what's discussed and give them a voice in deliberations, but no actual control. Is my understanding incorrect?

As a shareholder, I’d never vote to continue employee-unfriendly policies in a knowledge work company. There are too many shareholders that merely rubberstamp the decisions that come up at AGMs.

IMO "worker" has some dignity but "human resource" implies I'm on a spreadsheet somewhere alongside the depreciation schedule of the physical plant.

“Human” being an adjective in that phrase, rather than a noun…

We're all on a spreadsheet or database elsewhere.

Absolutely, so "human resource" has at least the benefit of being true even if it is baldly insulting to us.

"Worker" in the economic context is a socialist term. It doesn't sounds dignified to me. Employee is a better word.

"Worker" is not exactly a pejorative term. In some circles it would even be considered a mark of pride. Although "human resource" is ironically dehumanizing.

Neither were ever used in a pejorative sense exactly, more with a sense of apathy and an even clinical sense that an employee is thought of the same as a widget or a building or a piece of machinery.

I'd rather be called worker than the currently fashionable "individual contributor", the latter just seems so condescending.

Just call me what I am, don't try to sugarcoat it.

At my company they lately talk about hiring “resources”, not “people”. This really bugs me. They really seem to be hellbent taking any humanity out of work.

And it may be technically correct depending on the topic. Not all workers are employees.

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