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by viscanti 1430 days ago
> The problem is the tech industry trying to treat people like resources.

Isn't that true for most types of jobs? There's a role called "Human Resources" in most medium and large sized companies. Are factory jobs leaning in to embrace the humanity of workers and not thinking of them and calling them resources? Would we find things substantially better in most fast food restaurants? Gig companies are at least letting people decide when they want to work and when they want to do something else with a degree of flexibility that seems unmatched everywhere outside of the gig economy.

1 comments

There's a role called "Human Resources" in most medium and large sized companies

A title change which reflects the shift in business from treating people like people and turning them into "resources."

The role used to be called "Personnel," back when people were expected to be treated as persons.

> The role used to be called "Personnel," back when people were expected to be treated as persons.

Was that before the 8 hour work day became standard? Was that before businesses were forced to stop exploiting child labor? It seems like a lot of progress has been made where things are much more humane now than they were historically. I think a more compelling argument here is that a large number of employers throughout history have been thinking of employees as cogs in a machine. I don't know that there was ever some worker utopia where they were treated like real people en masse.

When was it when workers could expect to be treated well by their bosses?
When you want to get stuff done as opposed to having strikes, walkouts and other annoyances. People first and foremost want to be treated with respect, not like iron or coal or other stuff you'd dig up from the ground.
Even before that it used to be called Industrial Relations (I am referring to the practice in India pre-1980s).
Personnel has origins within the military...is that really what you want for some random employee?