[ryandrake]

It seems like this employee was in a no-win situation. If he engaged in the non-work-related conversation the co-worker was trying to initiate, he would have been fired. If he ignored the co-worker, they would have found a reason to fire him. Instead, he responded saying he was advised to keep communication to just work topics... and he was fired. The company was clearly planning on firing him for any possible reason.

His first mistake was complaining to HR about another employee griefing him. HR is always going to consider the initial complainer as "the problem."

[kenjackson]

> His first mistake was complaining to HR about another employee griefing him. HR is always going to consider the initial complainer as "the problem."

I can say this definitely isn't always true. In the companies I've worked at HR has always been extremely reasonable and cooperative with harassment claims. But corporate culture probably matters here, and I've never worked at a place like Uber.

That said, I would be curious to actual know the correspondence that was sent between the two. I can also say being a manager who has had to deal with a situation between two employees (more than once), they often both claim to be the one being harassed -- and usually even a little bit of digging reveals really clearly who the aggressor is.

[nostrademons]

The phrasing "HR isn't there to protect you, it's there to protect the company" applies more here.

My experience is also that HR is very reasonable and cooperative with harassment claims. But the thing is that when you have a legit harassment claim, the law is there to protect you. You could make things very expensive for the company in court, and so protecting the company does mean protecting you and treating you respectfully and cooperatively.

If HR investigates and finds you don't have a legit case and that in fact you may have been the instigator, then protecting the company probably means getting rid of you. Your judgment and account of the facts is questionable in that case, and you're a liability from the other side.

I don't know exactly what happened in this case, but in the harassment case I've had to handle as a manager, the (male) employee said that the (female) victim had initiated everything and had this weird fascination with him, while the paper trail that everybody could see clearly showed that he was both the instigator and the one behaving improperly. Projection is strong in cases like these. So it's entirely possible we're not getting the full story from this anonymous blog post.

[watwut]

> and that in fact you may have been the instigator, then protecting the company probably means getting rid of you.

That protects other employees. If you are instigator and then go to complain to HR trying to make them punish the victim, firing you protects everyone around you. And it protects the culture from becoming toxic.

HR can play negative role, but this scenario is not one of those.

[kenjackson]

> The phrasing "HR isn't there to protect you, it's there to protect the company" applies more here.

I agree (although had interpreted the statement originally differently). Unfortunately, the part about "XYZ isn't there to protect you" applies to so much in life. Even police don't have a responsibility to you protect you (but just the public as a whole). The lesson from stuff like this is often to make sure your best interest are aligned with the most powerful and active stakeholder in the "room".

[nostrademons]

Or don't engage with people whose interests are not aligned with yours. You can do an awful lot, and carve out a pretty good life for yourself, if the powerful people whose interests are not aligned with yours don't know that you exist. Considering that everybody else has an incentive to align with the most powerful and active stakeholder in the world, this is the only way to avoid a unipolar dictatorship.

Relating it back to the story at hand, the blogpost's author would've done well to just disengage from the coworker who didn't like him, and also to not report them to HR. What I had to tell my report when HR got involved: "The right thing to do here was nothing."

[soperj]

People have this mistaken belief than HR is for them when they are there 100% for the employer. The only people who are there for you in these situations is the union (if you have one).

[cm11]

I also think HR has this same mistaken belief about themselves. There are things they're aware they know that the employee(s) don't so they have some sense in which they're part of a misdirection, but anything that seems "a little unethical, but those are the rules" they kinda attribute to "I'm just doing my job and so it's not unethical". The job can of course be to do unethical things.

Depends on the company, but HR (and some other functions) can be relatively low power and it frequently seems that the low power person is facilitating groups that are above them, which leads to them serving as a pillow for the higher powered person to abuse the medium powered one and let the low powered absorb the blame/blows. It's unfair in a certain way, but realistically I think the low powered one refusing (in spite of them having the most to lose) is kinda the main way to keep things from getting worse and so things get worse. They can refuse or they can not take the job or they can somehow not pass the high powered person's problem on to the medium powered one, but they're disincentivized. I can empathize with the situation and expect them to take the deal that enables the high powered ones to take advantage of others while still assigning blame for not fixing the little part they could fix. Fwiw, it's also true of most middle managers and PMs, though they might not technically be the lowest powered one in the triangle. If they don't stand up for the thing they say is ethical, then I think it's straightforward that they're a/the problem.

[simianwords]

this cliche is so often repeated that i'm now questioning whether this is even true.

unions are counterproductive many times - they serve the interests (only temporarily) for the incumbents while failing to or ignoring the larger consequences like the whole company or industry declining.

i wonder if the HR cliche is similar.

[stetrain]

The cliche about HR doesn't mean that HR can't ever be helpful to you, just that they are incentivized to be helpful in ways that help the company. For example advising on how to best use benefits to keep employees healthy or recover from an illness or injury so they can return to work.

But if your needs as an employee go against what is best for the company by costing money, productivity, or creating risk for bad publicity, or they go against high level managers or executives who hold outsized sway with HR, then it will be difficult for you to get help from them.

[OkayPhysicist]

If you belong to a union, you are the incumbent that the union exists to serve. Depending on the union's bargaining power, it may or may not succeed in representing your interests, but it has your interests as a central goal.

[scubbo]

> they serve the interests [...of] the incumbents

Yes. The employees. That's the point.

> while [...] ignoring the larger consequences like the whole company

Good. That is, again, the point - to advocate for the employees when their interests are in opposition to those of the company.

You say they're counterproductive - sounds like they're working exactly as intended.

[simianwords]

>You say they're counterproductive - sounds like they're working exactly as intended.

it can lead to the whole company or industry to be destroyed, so while it may protect the specific incumbents it puts the whole industry/country in jeopardy. in aggregate these things can work against favour.

if everyone ends up doing this the system can't work

[soperj]

Can you name a time it's destroyed an industry?

[EPWN3D]

That's not true at all. I don't like HR departments, and I think they're the scum of the corporate world, especially the latest batch of HR geniuses to slither out of whatever business school swamp spawns them.

But their job is to protect the company. If you report behavior that presents a liability for the company, HR will take it seriously. I know people who've been fired through these processes.

What you shouldn't do is report frivolous complaints. A lot of people misunderstand HR the same way they misunderstand the legal system in America. They use it in place of having a grown-up conversation. Like judges, HR people will have little patience with matters that could've been resolved by putting on your big boy or big girl pants.