[mlrtime]

Work as a Manager in a large tech org and you will see very quickly how the company operates (HR / HRBP). The higher you go up the quicker you see that employees aren't looked at as people, but as numbers or dollars.

My first manager job I was very naive, I went to HR to get help with directs. It was a bad idea, it put me and my direct at risk... never again.

The sad truth is that the managers who actually care and want to solve problems for people (personal and technical) usually get the wrong end of the HR stick first.

[s1artibartfast]

I am a manager. I have those conversations regularly (its my job). I have had tough conversations about if we should burn out an entire team or not, likely losing them, so i get it.

My question was not about if it is true or not, but why people like saying it so much.

[9x39]

Nobody else bit, so I think it's a shared bitterness that unifies a naive group who challenged someone with real power through HR and lost.

Through multitudes of anecdotes, this group often apparently holds that conflict could be solved by going around someone, their supervisor, say, and invoking HR as if they had authority over the situation and would obviously correct the injustice. Having misplayed their hand, they end up feeling victimized through organizational discipline or firing and abandoned by the would-be savior HR. With the moral injury now upon them, they tell everyone this warning as if it were a great lie to be exposed.

Our bosses tend to be the primary relationship to manage in organizations. Just the way power works, and it mostly poses a problem when one party doesn't realize it and thinks relationships are optional.

[reactordev]

people say it often because people don't learn the lesson. The messaging is human centric and there to make it sound like they are there for you. They aren't.

[s1artibartfast]

They can be, but like everything in life, it is situational.

HR is a tool. They have helped me with tons of things, but there are things they aren't good for.