[zild3d]

Agree on PIP, but HR is often your friend actually, it's just a pretty broad field that tends to be behind the scenes. A significant amount of HR is aimed at making a company great to work at - pay, benefits, culture, recognition, career growth, learning & development, etc

[jsjohnst]

> HR is often your friend actually

This is a dangerous POV and is very wrong. A “person in HR” might be your friend “right now”, but HR is never your friend. HR is there to protect the company. All those things listed later in your post are there to protect the company. It might seem like a nuance, but it’s a very important nuance that if you stepped back (like the person in the source article did about a different situation) and thought about, you’d understand.

[zild3d]

I'm not going to try to change your mind, was simply raising the point that it isn't as black and white as "HR is never your friend". I'm aware there are large swaths of companies where HR is simply there to protect the company, and certainly not your friend.

For what it's worth, being a cofounder of an HR tech startup I work closely with and know a lot of HR professionals, my fiance has an HR background, and our academic advisors we work with are doing some great research in the field. Many companies just don't partake in the newer emerging strategic HR practices yet and continue the stigma.

[jsjohnst]

You won’t convince me, so agree it’s a waste of your time. No matter how you try to spin it (“newer emerging strategic HR practices”), it’s fundamentally a fact that HR departments aren’t your friend. They can be very “friendly”, some can even try their best to look out for your interests, but ultimately the company’s interests will prevail otherwise the company won’t stay in business. As someone in HR, you should fully understand the legal minefield out there and why it’s so important for employees to keep a healthy separation.

[test1235]

I'm reading Developer Hegemony - it's quite interesting. The guy states HR is not there for you - it's (ultimately) there for the financial benefit of the company (makes sense). The employee benefits are baubles in lieu of cold, hard cash (with which you could choose to buy your own baubles, presumably).

[varjag]

Only as much as cost/benefit of all this helps the company. HR is not a union. It literally has "resources" in the name, said resource being you. Resources get written off, used up, sold and discarded as a matter of business practice.

[saiya-jin]

As others have written - HR is there to protect company from employees. I've been working in one company where HR people were actually nice, helpful and engaged in various activities and improvement, but those are rare (and I've been lucky).

Standard corporation has lazy, useless HR department that is there to hire you (with minimal effort on their side), fire you, and stuff mentioned above.