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> There are a handful of contexts where it makes more sense, like for a HR person potentially

In academia, faculty functionally ARE HR people - with significant power

Sorry, I meant to explicitly include faculty as people who create teams and are responsible for a good work culture. I agree with you, they are HR people in practice.

What does that mean?

I work in industry.

Is my my tech lead an HR person? My manager? My VP? My Board? My majority shareholders? If not, why is a faculty professor an HR person?

Professor has more choice/control of team than your VP|Mananger|Lead

Professor is like CEO of 8 person company (or independent division). All your other examples are cogs in huge machine.

Faculty select teaching assistants and the research staff for their labs, effectively unilaterally. They have the power to hire and fire. They choose topics of research, and can instruct their mentees to stop a line of inquiry. This is similar in scope and power to a combined project-manager, research-manager and person-manager. They also are the decider to grant later-stage credentialing, so throw in a bit of training instructor too…

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