What this usually means is that the functions still exist but are named differently. Unfortunately the article does not go into any details beyond that attention-grabbing headline, but it does not sound very appealing:
> "But what if there is a case of bullying to be resolved, or a contract dispute that requires specialist knowledge?
Jackson says he expects his managers to take personal responsibility for these things (with appropriate training) rather than "shelving responsibility to a third party" - just as he used to do when managing his teams."
Is he seriously claiming that he expects individual managers to deal with employment law disputes themselves? If so it only means that they have not had an employment law dispute yet...
Incidentally: tech managers who have (nontrivial) HR duties are exactly as reliable, competent, and qualified as HR managers with programming and DBA responsibilities.
But the latter is self-evidently ridiculous, whereas the former happens all the time...
IDK, I’ve never seen HR add value to a company. They’re always a cost center and should be minimized as much as possible in order to hire more engineers.
This is the second form of personal attack I've had to warn you about in the last few hours! And you've done it before, as well, unfortunately. No more of this, please.
Also, please don't use HN primarily for ideological battle, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are. It destroys the site for its purpose, which is curious conversation on topics of intellectual interest. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I don’t still work there but checking out the page it looks like it hasn’t been updated in a while.
The company is closer to 40 FTE now, and we employ people of several minorities and protected groups, including LGBTQ, Hispanic, and Asian folks.
The President (whom I chose as my successor) is a woman. The product owner is a gay man. The support team manager is a lesbian. The lead developer on one product is a Chinese national. There are several people on the onboarding and support team who are Hispanic. These are just people I participated in hiring. I have no reason to believe the company has changed in their commitment to diversity.
When I left, the company was ~65% female, which was a conscious choice I made to try to do my part to get women more involved in tech. We went to great lengths to ensure equal pay.
Feel free to ask any of my former employees how we valued diversity and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
On a personal level, my wife is 1/2 Latina, making my child 1/4 Latino. We encourage him to learn his ancestor’s language and explore their culture. I’ve lived in South America and love their culture. In fact, we are currently in the process of moving to Costa Rica and am setting up a program with local public schools where I’ll be donating my time (and money by providing computers) to teach programming to interested children.
Honestly, I find your post to be highly insulting.
They could useful from an operational standpoint to make sure your resources are being allocated effectively if they focused on process improvements for the company that nobody else has time to test and implement. For example, HR should be keeping track of performance and worker satisfaction working from home; they should have data about performance and satisfaction in the office and compare it, be up to date on hiring and salary trends and have an opinion on what is necessary and appropriate in terms of perks and salary to hire competitively. This is all useful.
There is also a perception issue, as in my experience it feels like they are usually just there to print off some information about health insurance for you and run useless exercises.
It may well be that they'll have said dispute and will then be forced to bring in an HR department to do that work. But they'll have gotten to where they are now a billion dollar company at all which is a real feat.
Or they might look at hiring a 10-20 person HR department and say "3 million a year vs a (theoretically) one-time 3 million judgment? We'll keep taking our chances"
It could be a great place to work or an awful place to work. It probably depends a lot on who you are and which manager you end up reporting to.
Besides the obvious legal risks of this hands-off approach, I cannot imagine that this is efficient in any way. Do you really want your managers to deal with things such as pre-screenings and visa appplications themselves? Or are they simply outsourcing these tasks to agencies.
They can still filter candidates based on things such as availability, salary expectations, or target universities/companies. And call them if some crucial information is missing.
I think a lot of this discussion hinges on two roles of HR:
1) Risk management and mitigation, in which it acts like a police department. There are few checks or balances on HR power, and having police often outweighs the benefits of that police. I've heard of organizations where HR was more than a little bit toxic
2) Support and help. As a manager:
* I don't know what to do if e.g. a high-performing employee with high-level access to confidential information embezzled the company. A manager will run into situations like that one perhaps once in their career. I'd like to turn that over to professionals who know when to call the police, when to turn off the keycard and shut off IT access, or when to have a stern conversation.
* If there's a sexual assault accusation, do I want to be the person who fires someone who might be innocent and has their kids lose their livelihood? Do I want to be the person who tells a potential victim there's not enough evidence.
* There's the daily load of questions about vacation policies, health benefits, disabilities, or complex immigration issues. Quite frankly, I have no idea here, and I really don't want to have an idea.
My experience is that I run into once-a-career issues perhaps every 6-24 months at my rung of the management ladder, and it's helpful to have people who have been through them several times. I definitely don't want to be in a position of making Tough Choices when Bad Things happen. I'm good at mentorship and tech leadership, not e.g. fraud investigations, and I don't want the emotional load those entail.
A good HR department is incredibly helpful (just so long as everyone remembers they work for the company; they're not your agent or some kind of neutral party).
HR does seem like an inefficiency - and somewhat an internal police force that allows people to subvert personal responsibility. I would argue there are a lot of negatives than any positives.
People can work and function without a police force hovering over their every move. The company culture has to be really strong though.
Octopus is very tech-savvy (especially for a energy utility company), so in theory it's doable, especially in their line of business and size. Note that 1200 is still small as large companies go, especially these days when you don't have to build everything yourself and you can use agile/lean techniques to organize yourself.
* a team to manage the cloud relationship for email/web/hosting for their own apps, and colo if needed.
* design their own laptop images (or get them designed by the vendor) and outsource laptop provisioning/imaging to a 3rd party. If you use virtual desktops you can use your cloud vendor for hosting them.
Both of those could be 5-10 people with the right skills (called it an "infrastructure" team) -- less than 5 is possible but would create key person risk. There's still people with the right set of specialized skills, but it hasn't become a huge bureaucratic organization.
Looking at their website, they appear to have a data science team, so none of this precludes them having other teams to address cross-cutting concerns like cyber-sec, reliability, etc. Or from having software developers attached to teams tasked with delivering new products, e.g. they have several API offerings[1].
You could call it that. But in the context of the article, an "IT Department" (the term it actually uses) in many large non-tech companies, connotes heavy-handed control and -- usually -- poor user experience. I suspect many companies would want to avoid that poor experience, whatever they name the people who manage their tech.
"Bob left and he'd been storing everything on the cloud. We didn't notice for a while. Then we couldn't find the password, and after a year passed the data was deleted"
(This isn't to say local storage solves the problem. "The folder on the network drive is missing.")
Please don't take offense. I meant that is the purpose for funding an in house department from a corporate perspective. I started in IT over 25 years ago.
> How can a company learn how to find better and better ways to deal with things if it takes all of the intelligence of its people and diverts them from those big problems.
This is an argument for HR and IT, not against. If everyone in your organisation has to go out shopping for their own computer and set up their own sharepoint etc, they're all wasting their time doing something that should've been taken care of for them.
The problem isn't the existence of HR and IT, it's the dynamic of HR and IT as a set of interest groups - putting processes in place that make IT or HR's lives easier at the cost of productivity the other employees.
I work for an enterprise company. The motherboard on one of my staff's macbooks died during the lockdown and it needed to be repaired. Do you know what the Enterprise IT told us to do?
"Take it to the Apple store".
Are you fucking kidding me? You want me to send my staff out during the lockdown to get a piece of YOUR hardware fixed? No option to ship it, no drop off desk at our office or something.
You're absolutely right that when you setup a department called "IT" they are now a group of people that need to be catered to as much as the other staff.
"We don't want to expose IT staff to risk, so send your own staff to get the computers repaired. Then it's your fault if they get sick and die." was the message I got.
I've worked at a couple organisations where there was a mantra of 'No HR'. In all cases I saw mistakes and abuses that would / should have been picked up by a sensible HR person. I don't buy it. Granted you don't need entire departments of people but when you get to be a billion-pound company, there will be a need for some expertise.
How does HR "picks up" abuses? I work in company that has HR, but I don't see them as a place to solve actual issues - basically any of them. They do routine administration just fine, they are useful for that, but that is it.
If you actually think that something bad is going on, talking up actual hierarchy (complaining to higher ups) or leaving are only two sensible options. And if complaining to higher ups, then you put your resignation to HR.
But none of my interactions with HR made me think that these would be people capable to solve issues. They don't have processes to even realize problems are happening. They don't have trust of employees either.
At a company I once worked for, HR talked to us prior to interviewing candidates for an open position, with suggested lines of questioning for soft-skills, a framework for the decision process, and reminders of things to avoid for legal reasons. It may have been largely intended to cover the company's backside, but I would say it was useful at heading off some potential problems.
I would see this as "routine administration". It is useful thing.
> with suggested lines of questioning for soft-skills, a framework for the decision process
Our HR quite sux in these. They also consistently attempt to match people on positions that don't suit them - both
by personality (the persons personality not matching job) and by technical knowledge/background. So their input is not trusted and managers doing hiring consistently complain about it or simply ignore them.
Agree with this 100% people never seem to realise HR is there to protect the company ONLY. Literally they are a compliance function to stop company getting sued.
Right you say that, but I swear this view is some kind of really fucking weird Americanism that y'all take as gospel truth.
I've interacted with HR teams at a couple of jobs in the UK. These interactions have been fine. They have been there as the contact people to make sure I get paid for my work, that I can access my benefits, and that I am subject to the procedures and processes that I'm entitled to.
They are paid by the company and therefore they of course work for the company – and part of that job is ensuring compliance. But this is the same as e.g. a security officer, or a health and safety officer, or any number of other roles the involve running companies correctly and in accordance with best practices in a way that can benefit both company and staff. It's not an "either-or" situation!
I think the big 'Americanism' comes from the somewhat two faced nature of HR culture in the States - HR are (generally!) the people being super friendly and coming up with "the company is one big family aren't we so happy together" events and whatnot. They're also the people who, in my experience, have mostly bought into the MBA-isms about maximizing value in all things, which includes screwing over said employees as much as possible through legal, yet sketchy methods that make a lot of sense if you're treating employees as resources, not humans.
It wasn't a substantive comment and it used inflammatory rhetoric- that's a bad combo for HN. If you had included specific information about what problems you saw, that would have been more interesting.
I am curious what you mean by “ruled with an iron fist.” I am curious if you are able to offer a single compelling example.
This is an ad hominem but I don’t care: I have seen you here many times before pushing right-wing disinformation - and not something can be chalked up to a valid difference of opinion, but instead indicating that you are either a saboteur or, at best, hopelessly ignorant.
I see that yesterday you were pushing the (utterly preposterous and despicable) right-wing conspiracy that the COVID lockdowns are a progressive ruse and that after vaccinations the lockdowns will continue under different pretenses.
So I am wondering if maybe your hostility to HR comes from the possibility that you are a right-wing crank who makes employees extremely uncomfortable? I sure as heck wouldn’t hire you for anything!
The sheer fucking arrogance of someone to think they can tell the founder / owner of a company what they can and can't do (minus illegal stuff, obviously) is utterly mind-boggling to me.
I legitimately cannot even fathom it. This is akin to telling God how to run Heaven.
Ignoring the HR issue for a moment: a company where the founder had dictatorial powers is a terrible company. The CFO should absolutely tell the manager they can’t make an investment that’s reckless and stupid. The Director of Engineering should absolutely tell the founder that they can’t add that cool-sounding feature because it’s an inherent security risk. A humble Jr QA Engineer should tell the founder they can’t say a bug is fixed when it is not fixed. And any of these people should find different work if the founder overrules them or tries to bully them into backing off.
You’re totally right! The difference between these examples and my previous HR example is that yours show employees doing what’s best for the company, while mine shows employees doing what’s best for HR.
You should never... and I mean never... TELL your boss (much less a founder or CEO) what they can and can't do.
That's a great way to torpedo your career.
"You can't invest $10 million in ergonomic chairs." should be "While ergonomic chairs are a good investment, we might be better served investing $10 million in our core competencies for now, and perhaps focus later on the chairs when our revenue stream is a bit more stable."
"You can't add cool-sounding feature because it's an inherent security risk." should be, "While cool-sounding feature does, indeed, sound cool, I'm concerned about the potential liability this might expose the company to, given that implementing cool-sounding feature causes <security issue> by its very nature. I could look at implementing something that mimics the functionality of cool-sounding feature, but keeps our products secure."
And lastly, Humble Jr. QA Engineer should say, "Mr./Mrs./Miss So-And-So, if I claim that bug <Z> is fixed when its not, this might come back to reflect negatively on our company when Customer Y reports that bug."
And lastly, almost every company's founder / CEO / leader has dictatorial powers. Companies aren't governments. You live and die by the good graces of those above you, and if you can get noticed by the people at the very top, and you consistently deliver for them, you'll have a far more pleasant work life.
Or just telling people what they can and can't do and see how that one works out for you...
LMAO how is that “ruling with an iron fist”? You got that person fired! And no, I am a programmer who does not work in HR.
Nobody is saying HR is infallible. But a mistake like “HR had a silly policy around hiring” is not as bad for an organization as “the director of engineering got drunk, harassed an intern, and threatened to fire her if she complained.”
I only fired them because they had been doing this to other hiring managers without my knowledge for months. So they had been ruling with an iron fist against what was best for the company.
This was at a time when the company was growing customer base by 100% every few months and we needed people ASAP. HR decided it was marginally easier for them if everyone started on the 1st, harming productivity of value-add departments.
Making your life marginally better at the expense of company growth is ruling with an iron fist. Every department needs to be willing to do what it takes to sustain growth.
> “the director of engineering got drunk, harassed an intern, and threatened to fire her if she complained.”
It’s unclear to me how HR is any different from the CEO here. If any employee at my company experienced sexual harassment I would expect them to come to me, and said Director would be out the door within minutes. No need for HR there. If anything they’re just another hoop the victim has to jump through.
What if the intern was lying or it was a misunderstanding? What if the intern was afraid you'd think they were lying or it was a misunderstanding? What if the intern assumed that you support the director's behavior since you out the director in a high ranking position?
If the intern trusted you, why why would HR be a hoop they had to jump through?
How many employees do you have that rampant start date abuse had been going on without your knowledge?
I think that’s a fair criticism. It’s certainly a harder problem than I let on. A CEO can be as shitty, or more shitty, than HR. I hope I’ll never be viewed as less helpful than HR to anyone I employ.
Still, though, most of those issues can still apply to HR. IME, employees rarely trust HR departments to be on their side in a dispute. They’re paid by the company to look after the company’s interests, after all.
> It’s unclear to me how HR is any different from the CEO here. If any employee at my company experienced sexual harassment I would expect them to come to me, and said Director would be out the door within minutes. No need for HR there. If anything they’re just another hoop the victim has to jump through.
I agree with this - if a CEO tolerates bad behavior (such as sexual harassment) in their company, having an HR department or not will make little difference.
This is true (Ubisoft is an extremely good example - there, HR exists to protect the cabal of creeps who run the company). But if a CEO does not tolerate bad behavior, HR is an indispensable tool for protecting workers from unscrupulous managers and colleagues, and for allowing safe whistleblowers. It is ridiculous (and, frankly, suspicious) to suggest the CEO can handle it by themselves.
I always thought that HR was the most important department. Since humans are the most important resource, then the department that makes sure those resources are safe, secure, not abused, properly vetted, happy, etc., would be the most important. I imagine if I was ever the CEO of a big company that I would be working very closely with HR to make surr we hiring the right people, not abusing them (mostly through bad managers or policies), paying them well, good benefits, and the right incentives.
Maybe HR is an underutilized or badly utilized department in certain places. I dont know. Just thoughts I been having about HR.
EDIT: I'm not saying that companies are using HR successfully. I am saying that this is my view at how HR can be (and should be) used successfully. It all stems from the realization that humans are a company's most important resource. Accepting that conjecture, having good HR (how ever way you define that) is extremely important.
This is such a laughably naïve view of HR that I can only assume you've never worked for a large corporation (Hell, possibly any corporation).
Human Resources exists to limit liability of, and reduce the associated costs caused by, the humans at your company.
I have a close friend who used to be the Vice President of Human Resources at one of the largest companies on the planet. I have known this person since I was 7. Working in HR changed him, and definitely not for the better. He told me about how early in his career, he had to a fire a man who had worked at <Enormous Defense Contractor> for 28 years. Who, according to their records, had only ever taken 3 sick days. He didn't fire him because of poor performance. He didn't fire him because of a sexual harassment scandal. He fired him because the Director of HR told him to fire him, because he was one of the last employees brought in under a 30 year retirement scheme, and he was going to eligible for a 50% pension in 14 months.
He created a predictive analytic model that could identify when someone was considering leaving their job within a 3-6 month period, with 94% accuracy.
He has told me about conversation after conversation where an employee came to him for a raise but instead he convinced them that they didn't want more money, they wanted more recognition and responsibility, so he created new job titles for them a laughably increased salaries that didn't even keep place with inflation.
He recently tendered his resignation and has since gone to work for a private firm, where he no longer has to be a, quite frankly, ruthless piece of shit.
He's a far better person for it. His drinking has considerably diminished, and his outlook on humanity is far less dark. HR is where decent people become twisted into cynical shitbags and where evil mother fuckers become downright sinister. In 25 years, I've only ever known one decent HR person. Just one.
May I inquire if you have ever worked for a larger company?
You are describing a union.
HR exists to serve the companies interests, not the employees.
As the name implies, the purpose is to manage, and maximize the efficient utilization of, the resource "human being".
This can mean preventing abuse because it's a legal issue or because it's bad for productivity and team morale.
But it just as often means shuffling people around and making sure affected employees keep quiet, don't cause a stir or actually sue.
This is not black or white, of course, there are companies and HR departments that value employees and try protect them, but there will always be a conflict of interest because the primary goal is to help the company.
the department that makes sure those resources are safe, secure, not abused, properly vetted, happy
You have a very strange idea of what a HR department does. Its job is to protect management from workers, and that's it. "HR is not your friend" is a common saying for a reason.
> "But what if there is a case of bullying to be resolved, or a contract dispute that requires specialist knowledge?
Jackson says he expects his managers to take personal responsibility for these things (with appropriate training) rather than "shelving responsibility to a third party" - just as he used to do when managing his teams."
Is he seriously claiming that he expects individual managers to deal with employment law disputes themselves? If so it only means that they have not had an employment law dispute yet...