[mrcold]

Policy number 1: Never hire HR people or create an HR department.

Policy number 2: The core team is everything. Anyone else is just there to help out.

I'm probably an extremist. So take my comment as more of a personal opinion. But be very very careful with HR departments in a tech company. Most of us hate them. Most of us think they are useless. And most of us hate interacting with HR during job interviews or even during day to day activity. Yes, you need people that manage personnel bureaucracy. But they should act as an invisible helping hand. Not as an intermediary between employees and the leadership.

And more importantly, avoid including HR in hiring decisions. Because they are biased, just like everybody else. They are going to pick people that they like. Not people you and your team like. Plus, they usually have no idea what the job is about. So all they do is make uninformed assumptions.

Sure, they can sit in on the talks and give you opinions about personality and whatever. But never ever be included in the decision chain. Hiring decisions should be made by the CEO/CTO and the affected team. Otherwise you're just going to get heartless boring relationships between random people that are just waiting to find a better job.

[acheron]

HR's primary purpose is to protect the company from lawsuits. So of course employees hate them; they hate you too. You are the potential enemy.

They're not useless overall, they're just not useful to you.

[mrcold]

That's so fucked up on so many levels, I wouldn't know where to start. But it does explain the current job market and ridiculous office politics.

Treat your employees like enemies and they will do their best to act like ones.