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Incidentally: tech managers who have (nontrivial) HR duties are exactly as reliable, competent, and qualified as HR managers with programming and DBA responsibi

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...

leesalminen 6y ago
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.
- jasonlotito 6y ago
  > IDK, I’ve never seen HR add value to a company. That's a shame. I have. And absolutely love them, and wouldn't trade them for more engineers.
- ameister14 6y ago
  HR is often poorly implemented, I think. 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.
- lupire 6y ago
  As CEO, why didn't you shut down HR?
  - throwaway210222 6y ago
    No mandate from the board. CEOs shouldn't be kings.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  Hmm, I looked into your history as a founder a bit. This is your company? https://www.gingrapp.com/about-us https://www.gingrapp.com/about-us I am not sure if you still work there, but... it appears that out of 23 employees, there is maybe one who is not white. I understand that pet management software in Colorado is, sociologically, a bit of an “alabaster” field and that it’s almost impossible to get ‘parity’ with even state-wide demographics. But in my experience, a company with > 20 employees that’s basically all-white is one that made a deliberately exclusionary choice and does not care at all about diversity. It is the kind of thing a competent HR professional can help with if you do care! But when you say you’ve “never seen HR add value to a company” it occurs to me that you and I have very different conceptions of “value.”
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    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.
    - ojnabieoot 6y ago
      It is too bad you are insulted and there was nothing in my comment that said anything about your personal priorities. But the professional priorities of the company you founded are obvious. Both Glassdoor reviews of Gingr (by unhappy former employees) gave the company a 1/5 on diversity and inclusion, and suggested the company has a problem with people hiring and promoting their pals. I am guessing you don’t want me to “ask any of my former employees how we valued diversity” and if I did I doubt I would “be pleasantly surprised.” By the way, severe culture problems like these are something HR can help you avoid! You mention that the company is 65% women, but are they front-loaded in sales or IC position? You mention a gay product owner, but LGBT men rarely face serious employment discrimination in tech roles (let alone the Chinese developer). Nothing you present here is enough to make me change my opinion about the company (it in fact entrenches my opinion that Gingr is not at all bothered by the fact that none of their employees are black). And again: the company you founded has pictures of 23 employees and only one of them is possibly not white. Perhaps the nonwhite ones were sick on picture day, but that’s a fact. It is also a fact that Glassdoor only has bad things to say about diversity at Gingr. These facts are much more valuable and rigorous than the fact that you have Latino family members. And nonwhite job applicants notice things like this. It’s egregiously racist and unacceptable in 2021. If Gingr doesn’t want strangers to look at their company and think “wow, look at these racist-ass white jerks” then they should take diversity more seriously than their founder did.

leesalminen 6y ago

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.

jasonlotito 6y ago
> IDK, I’ve never seen HR add value to a company. That's a shame. I have. And absolutely love them, and wouldn't trade them for more engineers.
ameister14 6y ago
HR is often poorly implemented, I think. 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.
lupire 6y ago
As CEO, why didn't you shut down HR?
- throwaway210222 6y ago
  No mandate from the board. CEOs shouldn't be kings.
ojnabieoot 6y ago
Hmm, I looked into your history as a founder a bit. This is your company? https://www.gingrapp.com/about-us https://www.gingrapp.com/about-us I am not sure if you still work there, but... it appears that out of 23 employees, there is maybe one who is not white. I understand that pet management software in Colorado is, sociologically, a bit of an “alabaster” field and that it’s almost impossible to get ‘parity’ with even state-wide demographics. But in my experience, a company with > 20 employees that’s basically all-white is one that made a deliberately exclusionary choice and does not care at all about diversity. It is the kind of thing a competent HR professional can help with if you do care! But when you say you’ve “never seen HR add value to a company” it occurs to me that you and I have very different conceptions of “value.”
- leesalminen 6y ago
  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.
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    It is too bad you are insulted and there was nothing in my comment that said anything about your personal priorities. But the professional priorities of the company you founded are obvious. Both Glassdoor reviews of Gingr (by unhappy former employees) gave the company a 1/5 on diversity and inclusion, and suggested the company has a problem with people hiring and promoting their pals. I am guessing you don’t want me to “ask any of my former employees how we valued diversity” and if I did I doubt I would “be pleasantly surprised.” By the way, severe culture problems like these are something HR can help you avoid! You mention that the company is 65% women, but are they front-loaded in sales or IC position? You mention a gay product owner, but LGBT men rarely face serious employment discrimination in tech roles (let alone the Chinese developer). Nothing you present here is enough to make me change my opinion about the company (it in fact entrenches my opinion that Gingr is not at all bothered by the fact that none of their employees are black). And again: the company you founded has pictures of 23 employees and only one of them is possibly not white. Perhaps the nonwhite ones were sick on picture day, but that’s a fact. It is also a fact that Glassdoor only has bad things to say about diversity at Gingr. These facts are much more valuable and rigorous than the fact that you have Latino family members. And nonwhite job applicants notice things like this. It’s egregiously racist and unacceptable in 2021. If Gingr doesn’t want strangers to look at their company and think “wow, look at these racist-ass white jerks” then they should take diversity more seriously than their founder did.