
Myth: HR is on your side. Reality: The Uber sexual harassment scandal - fooey
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/6/19/15830408/uber-sexual-harassment-scandal-hr
======
beagle3
One has to be incredibly naive to think HR is on the employee's side. Always
follow the money:

Who pay's HR? Company; ergo - if HR is against company, HR gets replaced.

Same for binding arbitration: Who is the arbiter's repeat customer, company or
client? company. ergo, if arbiter is not good for them, arbiter gets replaced.

Also, when you buy real estate, some people believe that _their_ agent is
looking out for them. However, if you look at the money, one party (buyer)
brings money to the table, and three parties (buyer agent, seller agent,
seller) take money proportional to the deal amount; Therefore, everyone except
buyer wants deal amount to be maximized.

~~~
pasbesoin
Given that a lot of HR is deliberately duplicitous about this, and that
apparently -- still -- other "authority" figures in many young peoples' lives
don't address this (every college "career counseling" center in the U.S.: I'm
looking at you), I think one bout of naiveté can be excused -- although still
preferably avoided.

HR IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!

Hell, HR often is not even the hiring manager's friend. "Best practices" are
often a poor fit to the real world and individual circumstances. Hiring
managers often have to jump through hoops to try to get HR to act on the
candidates they actually want.

The way to work HR, is to know that -- if they're competent -- they are all
about risk management.

So, make what you want also the way they minimize their risk, to the extent
you can.

When I left one of my jobs, some of my PTO time had lapsed per a newer "use it
or lose it" policy -- this "loss" probably aided by another prior action,
lumping "vacation" time and "sick" time into a single pool.

But, I'd done well by my team. And HR didn't want any unnecessary waves. So,
they paid it to me, regardless.

It was also a time of enough organizational transition, that this individual
action would most likely "get lost in the wash" and not become the basis for
another employee claiming unequal treatment.

THAT's how HR works.

They help you, only when it helps them.

The rest is all empty rhetoric. If you buy it, they just gained (gamed) some
cheap compliance from you -- that's all.

P.S. As always, individual circumstances _may_ happen to vary. But regardless,
go in with your eyes open and your guard up.

------
malandrew
At least this article gets it right in identifying this as an industry-wide
problem instead of narrowing responsibility to a single company. I can only
attribute this to the fact that this article was written by an HR professional
instead of a journalist, who often confuse cause and effect according to their
own personal biases and agendas.

[http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2011/08/the-murray-
ge...](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2011/08/the-murray-gell-mann-
amnesia-effect/)

Correctly identifying this as an industry-wide problem means that all HR
departments get appropriate scrutiny instead of focusing scrutiny on one
specific HR department, which has the unfortunate effect of causing society to
ignore problems that exist in practically all HR departments.

------
SilasX
Yes, yes, it's become a cliche to point this out. (See: every comment posted
as of this moment.)

But that's not the real lesson here -- we now see that this
stonewalling/gaslighting _didn 't even help the company_, since HR were _so_
hardcore about being _so_ kafkaesque that Uber got stuck with a major PR
scandal that cost numerous managers they were ostensibly protecting!

That's a particularly nasty kind of frustration -- not simply when someone
opposes your goals, but does it so confusedly that they're hurting themselves
in the process and yet you're still powerless to stop it! (Anyone can relate
to Fowler's experience if they've had to deal with that kafkaesque, self-
hurting bureaucracy "that will make you look bad if anyone actually takes an
interest in the case".)

So no, it's not enough to dismiss this case as "HR protects the company,";
that logic wouldn't explain why, in this case, they "protected" the company by
doing extremely risky things that could blow up badly.

------
tovacinni
Does anyone actually think that HR is on their side? :p

~~~
fred_is_fred
When I was just starting my career, I did. I think a lot of people assume that
they are there to help and protect you.

~~~
gozur88
Sniff. I remember when I was young and naive too. Actually, it may have been
mostly true thirty years ago, before the workplace became a minefield.

~~~
fred_is_fred
There's nowhere that teaches you this lesson except hard experience. I found
out when I was accused of theft by security at my office.

------
pmontra
HR is always on the side of the company. Think Cattle Resources in a farm.

I remember a post that compared it to secret police. First rule in any country
with secret police: stay clear of secret police. I can't find it but there are
plenty of them. Examples

[https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/the-hr-
se...](https://theartsmechanical.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/the-hr-secret-
police/)

[http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2015/11/25/is-hr-the-
new...](http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2015/11/25/is-hr-the-new-
corporate-.html)

