[juanbyrge]

Seems like OP observed something unsettling at the office, wanted HR to fire the perpetrator, and HR did not do that. Then OP generalizes and says that HR is not effective and not your friend. However, there are many gray areas where it's hard to justify firing someone. For example, let's say this person was acting passively aggressively and ignoring/avoiding someone. Is that a fireable offense? I am not sure it is. There are also very clearcut situations, like harassment or racism or aggression. But there are a lot of gray areas also.

[shortandsweet]

Good example. My boss pretty much ignores me and avoids me. I don't see myself winning at all so I just figure at least I'm not being micromanaged. Flipped a negative into a positive.

[NestedLoopGoBrr]

Even the situations that you argue are clearcut are not. Say for example two teams in separate locations were working together, solely through email. One had a lead, who effectively lead both teams. One day they all met together in the same location for a team building event, and the other team discovered that lead was black. Suddenly when working together the lead was met with scrutiny, hostility, and even aggression. But because they never said the explicit gotcha words, there is no clearcut situation. And while that lead can raise attention to the problem with management, their only hope is an empathetic manager — which is rarely the case, especially without shared experiences of that kind of problem. Inevitably, that employee quits, because they find themselves stuck in performance reviews that are subpar, courtesy of having uncooperative coworkers (or worse, they poison the well behind this employee’s back), with no real hope for rectifying the situation.

[dan-robertson]

Surely the first example in the OP is one of these clearcut situations (I don’t think there’s any law in California obliging people to report passive aggression) and the point is that HR ignored the allegations until they came from the accused’s manager.

Surely there are grey areas but to consider them on their moral merits, HR would need to be in an impartial position which this article claims they are not.

[musicale]

I think the point is that HR exists primarily to protect the company from its employees. It's very good at that.