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Comment by switch007 | Hacker News Reader

"HR is not your friend" needs to be standard career advice.

My experiences with HR:

- Often staffed by aggressive, yet very sociable and smiley people. They would nail you to a cross if the directors demanded it.

- Even a basic knowledge of labour laws is not a pre-requisite for a career in HR. That is because there is little regard for them by the C-levels.

- Try and avoid them. Do not go running to HR. Sort it out yourself or work it out with your boss. If the problem is your boss, it's likely that they're much friendlier with HR and treated with much more respect than you. If you do go to HR, think hard about how you are respected and viewed at the company.

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While working at Apple I made the mistake of thinking HR was going to be helpful. I was offered a new position there and took it but only on the grounds that I would not have any duties related to my old position. I was told that was acceptable. Three Weeks after starting my new role they started giving me my old duties back. I complained this was against the agreement we had on me accepting my new position. The HR ref played dumb and would only say "Well Apple has invested a lot of time and money into you, do you expect them to not utilize the you as a resource?" I had one additional encounter with them regarding a manager who had been, as I saw it, mistreating me. I was assured the conference between is was confidential. An hour after that meeting I was called into a room to sit and face three managers who grilled me about why I was dissatisfied with them. It was one of the most uncomfortable meetings I have ever had. I had no clue how to react and realized then and there my days were numbered. HR is definitely not your friend.

"Even a basic knowledge of labour laws is not a pre-requisite for a career in HR."

This is the surprising thing to me. My wife works in HR, but is also an attorney and her boss and boss's boss are also attorneys. They run their department substantially more in line with federal and state laws than just about any other I've encountered. When we're talking with friends and other people who work in HR, she usually later tells me everything they're doing wrong and it's interesting how far off-base many companies are.

You should take a look at some of the organizations involved in the HR field. They seem to be designed to sell training (someone reads you a powerpoint) and certifications while providing nearly zero real value. The companies that they refer people to for services can be of dubious quality. It seems like a market that is ripe for disruption.

Interesting I have thought that might be a market for consultants to come in early and sort out problems like they had at github recently.

Id be the good cop and my old mate Pat Mulligan who's Industrial relations for the post office could be the bad/cop legal muscle.

It seems that way, but remember who's writing the checks for HR services. As long as cost of legal settlements < benefits of using HR to suit management, there's no incentive to buy into compliance-driven HR providers.

Others have pointed out in this discussion that keeping cost of legal settlements low is arguably the number one benefit management is looking for from HR, so if they're not getting that right, there's probably not much benefit to employing them at all.

I wasn't terribly surprised. Being ignorant of labour laws that empower employees (or at least appear to) is a convenient excuse for treating staff horribly in certain situations.

Of course I've been in situations where HR don't know the laws and others where they chose to ignore them or denied their existence.

I worked for a company that knew enough about labor laws to fire half the maintenance staff and then make the remaining supervisors all salaried "assistant managers" so they could keep them on-call 24/7 and work them as much overtime as needed. Manipulating the position requirements and duties on paper to make it seem like they were more white-collar than blue-collar was easy.

When it comes to saving money, HR departments educate themselves rather well in regards to the law.

What that company did was not legal. One of the requirements for classifying an employee as a "manager" is that they actually manage subordinates as part of their duties. If everyone was an assistant manager, none of them were, and they would have been entitled to overtime. (And the company subject to heinous penalties for labor violations.)

This is where a little bit of knowledge is very dangerous. Companies read a small part of the laws and think it's very simple to reclassify hourly employees to salaried employees. It's not.

And US government units really care about this because among other things, you're not getting paid overtime, and they've not getting their cut in taxes on that.

Is your thesis there really that individuals in the federal government (beyond those at the IRS specifically charged with being concerned with it) are so concerned about tax compliance that it is one of their primary motivations when doing their job?

In the US, at least, if the supervisors pursued legal action, they'd have a case if their job duties were closer to those of non-exempt employees than exempt ones.

Also, this is why labor still organizes in the US, even if organization is down substantially over what it used to be.

Unfortunately, the state that this occurred in has considerably defanged unions. There is one for the workers of this company, and its a subset of a national union, but they have no power and the company merely humors them just for good show.

And yes, if the workers had pursued legal action, I think they would have had a case, but these people were somewhere around lower middle class or poverty level and they were very afraid of losing their jobs. Knowing them, and others who are in similar situations, I completely understand and sympathize. When you're treated like crap, but given the illusion that you're respected and needed, you'll convince yourself that everything is "good enough." I myself did it for many years.

I'm self employed now, so take the following with a grain sf salt - it worked for me though. When I was dealing with HR, I made sure to growl a lot while talking, and stand in front of the only exit. There's a kind of sociopath that will only act with some consideration if they realize that their skeletal integrity is at risk, because they're the sort of people who would do that to others if given the chance. I don't beat up people at random, but you can bet that at least some sociopaths would if they thought they could get away with it - use it against them. Not to mean that all HR folks are sociopath, but you do get quite a few.

That's a bit dicey - the kind of thing that may work delightfully well and be justified and appropriate in maybe like 1% of cases, and be excessive and likely to backfire horribly in the other 99%. But then, there's the issue of having to be like that pretty much all the time for it to be really believable and effective. Use at your own risk.

That's probably the reason that guy is now self employed

Actually it's because I realized that I could make three quarters of the money while working less than half the time :) I'll never be rich, but I'll always have time to tinker and do a bit of volunteer work. Also, no commuting, that's a good 10 hours a week I'm gaining for myself right there.

That's awful! You should never even insinuate physical threats like that. You're putting yourself and others at risk by doing so and permanently harming your own reputation.

Look, I'm not hopelessly naïve (most of the time) and understand very well about standing up to what's right, but there's a way to do that without acting like this. Even if the person you're dealing with is a sociopath, even if they're terrible human beings, there are ways around them that don't rely to threats, real or implied.

Negotiation takes a lot of nuances, verbal and physical, but you can achieve a lot diplomatically without being intimidating physically.

I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree completely.

Edit: Also, I didn't downvote you because what you brought up was still interesting and allowed me to voice my opinion.

The last time I hit anyone without provocation I was 9 years old, I got such a thrashing from my dad that my grandchildren will remember the lesson, trust me.

That said, some people can only think in terms of who can kick who's ass - for them might IS right. The stupid ones become muggers and extortionists, the smart ones get a system (legal, corporate, etc) to fight their battles for them.

I see no moral problem with presenting them with a simplified model of their worldview, it's their choice, I am just showing that I am willing to make it manifest.

Like I said, take with a grain of salt.

Totally agree. When I was young and foolish I reported harassment to HR. I was friends with a female colleague and we'd go out to lunch every now and then. Our mutual boss would call her in and say things like.. "What did he ask you about at lunch? You know, he's just trying to act like your friend so you tell him secrets." It happened several times, and finally one day I went to HR about it. I was asked to resign literally the same day.

It turned out, as it often does, to be a blessing. And it absolutely taught me the role of HR.

What did you do? Doesn't resigning save the company costs related to firing and/or employment insurance?

I'm surprised so many people have negative experiences with HR. Perhaps I've been lucky, or perhaps it is because we have a different culture in Scandinavia, but my experiences are almost entirely positive.

I guarantee the culture around labor and labor-management relations is different in Scandinavia and the US, no 'perhaps' about it.

As the parent said, in situations like asking about benefits, they're great because to me it's like talking to a sales team.

Have you ever, for example, had a contract change forced upon you, benefits taken away/downgraded, had long-time overtime policies changed, experience blatant discrimination? It's been my experience in cases such as those, you find out who HR works for.

> Have you ever, for example, had a contract change forced upon you, benefits taken away/downgraded, had long-time overtime policies changed, experience blatant discrimination? It's been my experience in cases such as those, you find out who HR works for.

A company trying that in scandinavia would be committing suicide, they'd get smashed by their union reps and would get shunned by other companies (Nordics have a labor model similar to germany, cooperative and regulated by collective bargaining agreement at multiple levels, generally starting at the "economic sector" level and filtering down. A company trying to break labor agreements which others have to follow in such a way would be seen very badly)

It's a good thing America has very few pesky Unions.At least in in IT jobs.

I've had long-time overtime policies changed for the better, actually! It was great. We had went from not getting paid for fixing servers on xmas eve, to a clear and well paid system of who was on call.

I have less than great experiences with HR as well, sure, but I don't agree that it's as horrible as many here describe it.

I've also had only good experiences with HR. I've always worked in pretty small companies where I have good relationships across the board. I feel truly sorry for folks who have demons working down the hall from them trying to take away their benefits. I wonder, why stay?

Some people love their work. Also, not everyone has an offer on hand for when they want out.

My wife is from Sweden and I spend a lot of time there. I'm moving there in a couple of years. Scandinavia definitely has a culture that does not tolerate the kinds of things we have in the States. It is definitely a cultural difference.

> Even a basic knowledge of labour laws is not a pre-requisite for a career in HR.

This might be a US-centric view. In the UK if you don't know employment law you're no use as an HR professional. Your line managers almost certainly don't so HR are often the only people who do.

It's my Britain-centric experience ;) (and not a view of the entire HR industry).

I agree with your statement but I do not think it disagrees with mine. Perhaps I should have said "for a job in HR".

But junior hr generalists probably will know very little in my experience ha done in BT who was oblivious to exactly what the division she was nominally assigned to did and who the employees where.

It's only up at the more senior legal end that hr will know much about the legal side of employment or how to handle things profesionaly when they go pear shaped.

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