[greenyoda]

Two things surprised me here:

1. What does HR know about running an agile IT department? Why would they second-guess your decision on who to hire?

2. One of HR's biggest responsibilities is to protect the company from lawsuits. If HR itself has a bias against older employees, that would indicate that they're not even qualified to perform their own job, let alone tell the IT department how to do theirs.

[reaperducer]

I find neither of those things surprising.

The companies I've worked with have HR departments staffed by people who are also straight out of college. They have no knowledge or concept of people older than their circle, nor of all the legal consequences of their position. As far as I know, there is no "HR school" that teaches people these things. They learn by failure.

[freetanga]

Sorry for the delay. Overall you are correct on both charges, but Corporate Reality gets in the way

On (1): they don’t know squat, but if I don’t have a multi-ethnic and gender-diverse team of people in their 20s, wearing Avengers tshirts, toting moleskines and matcha cups while scooting around on mopeds, we are “not agile enough” (which is corporate for “the pics from our competitors look cooler, everyone says you can’t be agile without Avengers T-shirts, OMG hire someone youngsters or our share prices will drop”. Sorry if I overused stereotypes, but hopefully you get the point. Dilbertian PHB doing PHB things.

On (2), yes but (a) most HR everywhere are work are hypocritical at best and bipolar at worst. Also, (b) in private they will also tell you they need to keep salary volumes in check, streamline pension fund levels, etc. “Resources” is the main noun, “Human” is just an adjective that was passing by.

I don’t agree to all this, but it’s the same in all big companies I worked at (even in some that hide this crap too well)