> I dunno, it kind of accurately reflects the view that in capitalist firms employees are resources, e.g. to be exploited.
Not that accurate, in my view: a resource is something that's a positive thing to be exploited.
"Human resources" in most companies are not there primarily to exploit the employee to their full potential/productivity/burnout level. They're there to protect the company from the employees!
That’s true but also a bit reductionist. And even in that regard, what they federally do is assist managers. So, for example, if a manager has an underperforming team member HR will ensure that manager follows process in applying performance management so that the manager follows process and doesn’t expose the company to liability.
Beyond this they’re also often key players in recruitment marketing, employer branding, hiring and selection, understanding the broader employment market to ensure pay and benefits are inline with desired industry norms, health and wellbeing, and the list goes on.
None of this is ever perfect and, of course, we can all think of companies where it’s been highly dysfunctional.
But, nonetheless, claiming all they do is protect the company from employees is still too reductive.
I am a resource for my kids, my spouse, and the rest of my friends and family. I am also a resource to my employer and other customers.
In any organization, a resource can vary from things such as land, chemicals, machines, humans, books, etc.
The term Human Resources seems accurate to a refer to a group of people that deal with the humans in the organization.
I do not see why “resources” is seen as having a negative connotation in this context. Of course, just like a family can mistreat a resourceful family member, so can any organization mistreat a human resource.
I guess I never saw it that way and struggle to think of example usage as a noun.
Human technology, human race, human rights, human error, human nature, human history, human power. Always an adjective.
I still cant think of a common noun usage, let alone an alternative noun reading for human resources. People don't say "hello human".
It is weird to see comments talking about "HR" as some euphemism or double speak. Maybe I'm the outlier, but I don't understand any other meaning besides managing the resource that is humans.
That covers lots of things- managing the liability, procurement, retention, firing, of the workforce.
In law we shouldn't be focused on ignorance and cluelessness. The outcome of what they have allowed is the crime. All the DOGE dudes need life without parole.
Do you actually believe that? Do you not think that at least SOME OF THEM, are working their asses off to save american tax payer dollars?
Can you point to any of the contracts in the wall of savings that have saved billions of dollars and disagree with any of them? https://doge.gov/savings
Did you look through that page before posting it? Currently, the default list of biggest savings is topped by things like eliminating a refugee intake facility, various HHS programs making sure public housing meets basic standards of habitability, and eradicating polio.
Is the argument that government was so efficient before that eliminating these seemingly useful programs was the best and only way to save taxpayer dollars?
Edit: the contract was 3.3B, so that changes the calculus to 1,109,966.78 per child. Haven't seen the facility, but i highly doubt they are staying in million dollar condos, but if they are... there are better ways to do that.
$1,136,436,294.65 for paying their legal services... Why are we paying a billion dollars for legal services of a program we have discontinued?
1,021,000,000 to eradicate polio... Of which that last case in the united states was in 2022... Polio is all but irradicated here in the united states.
We just seem to disagree with what's important and what's wasteful. You could build a brand new city for those amounts in the private sector.
That's the crux, for sure. The problem with DOGE though is that instead of creating better ways of doing anything, they just seem to eliminate doing those things at all.
Now we not only don't have a better way of doing a thing that might have been necessary, but we don't even have the sub-optimal way of doing that thing, so now it's not getting done at all.
Edit: Bringing it back to the article, if a person with access to 'a "core financial management system" belonging to the Federal Emergency Management Agency' was foolish enough to let their system get hacked, are we really finding a better way to do things, or are we being a little too careless?
It's 2.9B for a facility that can accommodate up to 3000 children simultaneously, as well as the support services to run it and provide the medical care and social workers needed to take care of them. It's not $3B for a specific 3000 children somewhere, so it's nonsense to try counting the cost per child that way.
I haven't looked at the contract in detail, but no, $3B over 5 years for 3000 people including construction costs sounds reasonably in line with prison costs (the closest comparison). Certainly not the order of magnitude too high like you're suggesting, which surely someone would have undercut on the bid if it were easy.
Wow, I took a look at the first one: ~$3 Billion for temporary shelter for just 3k kids? Almost $1 million per child??
Never heard of the program but on its face that sounds pretty bad. Grift, scam, or just inefficient govt? Not sure but not a good argument for keeping it around!
All thee DOGE dudes are destined to spend life imprisoned on Alcatraz. The scope of the antics done by these people and the downright disregard for security, ethics, law, and the Constitution, all make them the right people to make examples of.
I remember ripping songs in AudioMaster 2 on the Amiga with a sound digitizer, and writing them to floppy as a playable stream. You could boot the A500 with the disk and play back the digitized song. I think that was the point that it dawned on me where music was headed but not the form it would take. This was around 1990.
1999 intersected with CD-R drives that were suddenly cost effective so you could make your own music CDs for a nominal price. Especially as CD players were now the medium everybody wanted.
I should force myself to live with it for a week and see if I get more comfortable. One face of it it certainly does everything I currently rely on vscode remote for
Never underestimate the value of luck and of being in the right place at the right time. Larry doesn’t have to understand everything - he pays people to understand the things he doesn’t. His main expertise now is with racing boats.
Oracle was kinda sponsored by the U.S. government initially, IIUC (but maybe that's just conspiracy theories floating around?). They had the best SQL RDBMS for a long time, which created mindshare. Back then Larry knew better or didn't think of milking his customers, either way Oracle back then built customers and mindshare. Eventually Oracle began milking their customers. The Sun acquisition experience seems to bear out the idea that they are no longer interested in building mindshare, just acquiring products they can milk, then milk them for as long as possible, and let them die of attrition.
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