[herge]

I am sure everyone has stories about how awful their HR department it, but if you do not trust HR, then who do you trust in your company? Your boss? Nobody?

And, assuming you are a white collar worker (like a programmer) with a full-time permanent job, if you do not trust anybody where you work, why have a permanent position? Why not either become a contractor, or join a job with a union to collectively bargain for you? Are you not the ultimate chump in participating in a system where you are bargaining implicitly from the weakest position?

[fatjokes]

Nobody. Trust nobody. It's sad, but it's true. They're your employer---not your friend, not your family.

The upside: you don't have to feel bad about being a mercenary about it. You can feel shameless in trying to negotiate higher pay (regardless of your performance or ability).

A permanent position is only good because it's effectively higher comp (i.e., benefits, severance, etc). Most programmers are at-will employed anyway so it's not that much different from contractors.

A union is also, in theory, a good thing. However, over time it's evolved into a different beast with its own set of problems.

[HumanDrivenDev]

> Nobody. Trust nobody. It's sad, but it's true. They're your employer---not your friend, not your family.

It's not sad to me. It's common sense. In life, you trust your family and your friends - that's it. Anyone who isn't family or friends and who wants you to trust them is suspect (your boss, other companies, your government).

Of course you can have friendly relations with all and sundry in your company. I am on good terms with everyone where I work, from the cleaners to the regional CEO. But trust is a different matter altogether.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

> In life, you trust your family and your friends

Should we believe that family and friends are beyond the reach of the cardinal sins? I'm going to proclaim loudly: No! Family and friends are ideally placed to defraud us and sleep with our partner.

This isn't and indictment against trust, because, in practice, we trust family and friends anyway, and are rightly surprised and disappointed when they let us down.

We shouldn't be surprised or disappointed when HR, Legal, Management, etc, turn against us.

[candiodari]

All trust is relative.

Is HR more trustworthy than, say, the Chinese government ? Yes

(in most cases) is HR more trustworthy than far-off management of the company ? Usually, yes.

Are your friends and colleagues more trustworthy than HR ? Definitely

Is your family more trustworthy than your friends ? Usually

Of course your situation may differ, and some common sense needs to be applied, but HR is VERY low on the trust ladder.

[herge]

Then why not a contractor? If you trust nobody, at least you can protect yourself with a contact.

[icebraining]

In many places, the laws protecting employees are better than whatever you can make the company sign as a contractor.

[trevyn]

Trust is a continuum.

If you're in a good employment situation, you trust your CEO to run the company well and create good opportunities and prevent abuse in the chain of command.

If you're in a bad situation, you trust nobody and quietly collect your paycheck.

In the middle, you trust your manager to be a decent person and not throw you under the bus.

[hrthrowaway]

If it's bad, you also collect as much documentation proving that they're a bad actor, and that you did no wrong. So when you do go on to the next opportunity, you can handle it if need, by legal remedy as well.

HR is legal for the company. You need to take steps in your own hand. Not illegal, mind you. But you need to protect yourself.

[dvtv75]

> If it's bad, you also collect as much documentation proving that they're a bad actor, and that you did no wrong. (....) But you need to protect yourself.

This, a thousand times this!

In my last job, we had a media license that was set to expire after some months. My employer, thinking I was a fool, told me that we could just keep using it for a few months after the expiry and when we got caught we would just call it an "accounting error."

All along, the plan was to hold me responsible and fire me when we got caught. It's not the first time he's pulled that, so I wrote it down. He's the sort to take credit for your ideas, but blame you for his failures.

Because of him, I never trust someone who has skin in the game. They'll sell me out in a cold second ("nothing personal, it's just business.") if it'll help their bottom line or career prospects.

In short: get everything in writing, take photos of the computer clock and calender when you finish after working overtime, write down the details of any meetings or discussions. If you're in a place where health and safety issues aren't ever dealt with then photograph everything, with as much dating evidence as you can (front page of the day's paper, perhaps). Don't attend disciplinary meetings alone, have a lawyer with you.

Most importantly, know your rights and assert them. All the time. Don't let something slide just once, because "You worked one hour overtime last week, so it's now part of your job..."

Don't trust them.

[InclinedPlane]

Nobody. With the vast majority of corporations your relationship with them is not only entirely professional, it is mercenary. They have no allegiance to you, they will end your employment the nanosecond they believe that it makes financial sense to do so. And they will hurt you quite easily without even the slightest thought. Yes, you can still maintain a friendly relationship with your company, and not every corporation is the same, but if you don't start from a policy of distrust and wariness you can easily walk into a disaster. Don't put blind trust into your employer, let your trust be built on multiple specific examples of them being worthy of trust.

[watwut]

I have permanent position, beause that is most beneficial to me. Nothing to do with trust.

For the record, I trust people who behaved trustworthy and ethically in the past. E.g. I watch how they treat others, whether they lie about them or to them and assume they will treat me the same.

If HR past claims checks out, if they promised only thinga I consider realistic etc, I will trust them. Otherwise not.

[ianamartin]

I trust the accounting department to pay me on time. I trust the leadership of the company to make choices that provide enough money so that the accountants can do their job. I trust my boss to protect my time so that I can do my job. And I trust the other people on my team to be professional.

That's it. Anything else asking too much, and anything less is not acceptable. If I can't count on each and every one of those things, I won't take a job. If any of those things get violated, I'm out.

Of course there are different tolerance levels for different things. The people on your team are people. They have bad days. We all do. But if someone has too many bad days, then it goes back to the boss needing to protect my time. I don't know what the threshold is, but at a certain point, the boss needs to take action, so that my time isn't getting eaten up by an unprofessional coworker. That could mean someone who's just bad at his job, and I have to fix things. That could mean that there's some harassment going on. One of those could potentially be fixed with a pip. One of those needs to be addressed immediately.

On the other hand, if a company fucks up payroll, I'm looking for a new gig immediately. That's it. We're done.

I was in a management position for the first time at my last job, and I will soon be again at my new job. I actually have a lot more sympathy for managers than I used to. As a manager, you don't really have a group of peers you can expect to be professional. You have competitors who pretend to be peers. And that sucks. You're kind of alone. I highly recommend Michael Lopp's book, managing humans to anyone who hasn't read it.

The bottom line is that I don't think my expectations are really out of line. I think of them as the bare minimum of what I will accept as an employee and the bare minimum of what I will provide as a manager. If I can't get that as an individual contributor, the company is broken. If I can't provide that as a manger, I'm broken.

[hectormalot]

If we’re talking about something very serious that I couldn’t discuss with my direct manager I’d probably go for the company ombud. Then perhaps a regional or office manager that I know/trust. HR is probably third in that list.

[Spooky23]

Trust your union rep during formal grievances. Sometimes you can trust a boss or director.

I’ve had to fire a few people in my time. Most of them ended up getting fired vs a suspension or other punishment because they confided in HR.

Unless you’re a real consultant who goes from job to job, contracting isn’t much better. You still subject to bad bosses and bad prime contractors. But... if your spouse has good benefits you can make a lot more.

[mianos]

I can trust my boss to a reasonable degree as it is a two way relationship. I trust my peers as it is a more even two way relationship. There is mutual respect for skills and knowledge in both those cases. The world would be pretty negative if you could not trust anyone. You are part of a team who work together to produce something greater than you alone can achieve. The issue here is HR is not part of the team.

[jrhurst]

Yeah. Maybe your union representative if you got one. Otherwise honestly. You're mostly out of luck and have almost no power again your employers.

[lr4444lr]

I don't understand HN culture sometimes. This parent comment to mine is asking a legitimate question that begs a thoughtful answer. Why is he being down-voted simply because he's not jumping on the bandwagon? Don't we come here because we want discussion of a nuance level a few cuts above the rest?

[grzm]

> "I don't understand HN culture sometimes. ... Why is he being down-voted simply because he's not jumping on the bandwagon?"

There are a large number of people who read HN. While you might speculate as to why someone cast a particular vote in any particular direction (though we generally only notice the downvotes), it's not generally going to be useful. They may have voted for a reason you agree with, or one you don't, or one you don't understand at all. Note that you assume you know the reason they down-voted. And this is completely human: by default we attribute causes and stories and explanations, and it takes effort to explore more than those the first seem to fit the evidence. It's not a fault; as far as we can tell it's just a fact of human psychology.

And if they didn't provide an explanation at the time, the likelihood of them doing so after the fact isn't all that high. This is I suspect one of the motivations for the HN guideline

> "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If I were to speculate, I'd say it's a reaction to the last line: "Are you not the ultimate chump in participating in a system where you are bargaining implicitly from the weakest position?", as people don't generally react well to an implication that they're chumps, even made in passing as a hypothetical. I don't know whether that is the reason, or whether that's a valid reason, but I mention it as an example of another reason.

All in all, just follow the guidelines. If you have something substantial to add, do so in the most constructive way you can, keeping in mind that while you can't control how others behave on HN, you can influence it by how you comment. I believe that's how we get to a level of discussion, as you well put it, a few cuts above the rest.