

HR Antipatterns at Startups - jxf
http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/hr-antipatterns-at-startups

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rdl
Of all the organizations I've ever observed close up, only two have had good
HR practices:

1) Startups where a founder takes a deep interest in recruiting and HR --
specifically the "keep the team as productive as possible" part, not the BS
compliance stuff like payroll tax witholdings and the minimums of regulatory
compliance (which should be outsourced to a payroll provider; would love to
try Zen Payroll for this sometime).

2) The military. Yes, the military has some serious failings, but a lot of
that is due to scale and environment. Especially during the draft days of WW2,
the military did an amazing job of processing huge numbers of people and
making relatively good decisions about how to best use people. The modern all-
volunteer military does a reasonably good job -- especially in the mid-2000s,
when I watched it most closely; it doesn't do as well during long periods of
garrison or draw-down (90s, now), though. The military and USG have been at
the forefront of EEOC/integration/anti-discrimination in hiring, too. (they
held onto being anti-gay for far too long, but blacks (especially) and to some
degree women were integrated early and well in the military).

As a potential #3, based on Moneyball and the salaries paid, I assume
professional sports teams are also great at HR, at least for players.

I don't know about HR at bigger tech companies; the worst HR and hiring
practices are in small businesses and small startups where either no-one
important is interested in or motivated about the HR/hiring/management
mission, or where they're just generally clueless. It's hard to believe those
companies get to scale without fixing that, but maybe they do.

------
steverb
The article had a lot of good points that were over-shadowed by the bitter
tone the author chose to use. It's a shame really.

~~~
calibraxis
The tone is excellent. Anyone unable to read for that reason, is among the
least able to implement the ideas. (More likely to sabotage these ideas.)

------
tormeh
Call me cynical, but if I had a harassment issue with someone in upper
management in a company I would go to some kind of government agency - not HR.
Why should I trust HR when everyone there is an employee of the company? Yes,
the startup world has serious HR problems, but I don't think traditional HR
departments can solve all of them. Also that's white/indian/asian male
privilege.

