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I get the whole "HR can be evil" point, but this article could have also been, "Having friends in management is fine, but management is not your friend". Perso

I get the whole "HR can be evil" point, but this article could have also been, "Having friends in management is fine, but management is not your friend". Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Can we make points and articles about protecting yourself, as an employee, without resorting to such things? As a manager in a company, I've both had friends in HR and also had HR been my friend. Need to fire that horrible employee who is demoralizing the team and not being productive? HR is your friend. Need to hire the next best engineer? HR is my friend. Have I seen horrible, Catbert-like HR managers and people? Of course. In all levels of an organization, people can be horrible. Why round everything up to the cynical points just to get clicks?

OnlineGladiator 4y ago
> Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Personally, I'm so sick of there not being nearly enough cynicism in general. I've met cops that aren't total pieces of shit (who all ended up quitting in less than 5 years), but that doesn't mean cops aren't total pieces of shit. If the nature of the job is unethical, you should rightly call it out as such. HR's job is to pretend to be your friend while doing whatever the CEO and the lawyers tell them to do. They're the kind of people who are your friends until suddenly they aren't, and then you realize it was all bullshit to begin with. You're welcome to disagree. But from my perspective you're naive, and from your perspective I'm cynical.
- acover 4y ago
  Why is the nature of being a cop unethical? I agree there are abuses of the power but from what I've seen in real life it's important work.
  - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
    I should mention I am referring specifically to police in the United States. The short answer is because cops defend cops, including bad cops. People like to say it's just a few bad apples, but it's far more prevalent than that. And even if it were just 1 in 100, the fact that the cops band together to protect a rapist/murderer/whatever shows that they care more about unity than morals. I realize this answer is lacking, but I've had this argument so many times and it drains hours out of my day to pursue it - because the supporting data is complicated and people are correct to provide counter arguments (and then I have to respond and it goes back and forth for a while). I encourage you to do your own research on statistics regarding police officers in the US. The one everybody likes to cite is how many police officer's beat their wives - 40%. And even this data point is very complicated and requires a lot of nuance and so on. But since people enjoy stories, here's one egregious example of a sheriff's department abusing their power. Even I think this is exceptionally awful and most police departments aren't this bad, but it's well researched and makes for a good read. https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/ https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...
    - kenjackson 4y ago
      I tend to think there is a huge selection bias problem. The people that I knew in HS who wanted to be cops (and two did), were exactly the people you did NOT want to meet in a dark alleyway. They abused the power their physical strength gave them in HS... what makes you think they'd act differently with legal strength? And the people that I think are those who most want to help those in need and are compassionate, careful, and would take accountability seriously are those who don't want to do the job. There is also a kinship/bond that grows, which is hard to break. It's natural. You see it among sports fans, school alumni, console fan boys, company workers, etc... You see things through exceptionally biased glasses. Try to find a sports fan who feels like their team tends to be FAVORED by refs? You won't find them -- they all seem to think the refs are against their team -- every team's fans feel this way. Every team's fans feel like the fight on the field was instigated by the other team. Given these things, how do you mitigate against them, and construct a police force that is reasonable? I personally think it has to be external oversight, but this hasn't been easy to implement historically.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - mhink 4y ago
      > People like to say it's just a few bad apples, but it's far more prevalent than that. Not discounting your point at all, but the best response when someone says this is to point out that the saying is "a few bad apples spoil the bunch". It's very literal- an apple that's going bad releases fumes that cause other apples nearby to spoil. So it's very important to find them and get rid of them before that happens. Completing the analogy is an exercise left to the reader.
    - acover 4y ago
      Thanks for explaining. My experience is mostly with Canadian cops, which have some significant differences from American cops[0]. Though, consequences for cops are still rare[1]. However poorly executed, to me the service they provide is valuable and the cops I've seen at homeless shelters displayed patience. [0] - https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-canadian-cops-far-less-likely-to-kill-or-be-killed-than-u-s-counterparts https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-can... [1] - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/deadly-force-police-criminal-charges-1.4607134 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/deadly-force-police-...
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Power is corrupting, and police have a de facto shit-ton of real, immediate power over everyone in their vicinity. They have a "martial law bubble" around them that allows them to physically assault you, put you in jail, and upend your whole life with very little effort. You will have no recourse, and they will suffer no consequences. You may file a complaint with the department, and it will be followed up on, poorly, by a fellow officer who is highly motivated to see nothing but another disgruntled loser trying to get petty revenge. The judges don't care and work with the DA and the same officers all the time, and maintain cordial, cooperative relationships with them, all of which is damaged if there is any adversarial action. It is within this context an average intelligence, perhaps even above-average moral person enters after 6-weeks of training. This person likes watching football and drinking beer. They help their elderly neighbors with the trash. They are a "normal" man who will stand up for himself, physically, in extreme cases. Now give him a gun and a badge and a martial law bubble. How do you think this normal, average man will evolve when he realizes his power? When he sees his friends on the force us it, daily, to get what they want, to make their jobs a little easier? When does he learn to enjoy that feeling of power, for itself, the way it feels to beat someone and put his knee on someone's neck because they talked back to you, and know that no-one can do shit about it? And you can even rationalize it - they shouldn't have been rude, they should know how much power I have and that I'm only human, its really just punishment for being stupid. Plus, the public still loves me and is grateful to me, considering me in high esteem as a moral upstanding citizen - so we must be doing something right!
    - d0gsg0w00f 4y ago
      In my life experience an unsavory character turned law abiding citizen I found that I used to think ill of cops but after I changed, miraculously cops seemed to turn into amazing fantastic people. So I take all of these "cops are evil" claims with a grain of salt and seek out more context clues to what would initiate an interaction with LEO in the first place.
      - velp 4y ago
        This reads like "the problem disappears as soon as I'm no longer impacted". Just because cops see/treat you differently now doesn't mean they aren't still treating others poorly.
  - Parcle 4y ago
    Consider all the people harassed and locked up for decades over posession of marijuana. Sure laws have change but ethics never did. The obvious problem I see seems to be that cops exist to lock people up. When locking people up is often an inhumane and ineffective solution to the problem at hand.
  - fundad 4y ago
    Because policing covers up violence and murder committed by their own.
  - warcher 4y ago
    Police are tasked with maintaining law and order. Laws are equal for all people. Order is a set of subjective social rules that keeps everything in its "correct" place. Maintaining order often requires not enforcing the law equally. This is the essential moral difficulty of the police. If you have people who appear poor in a rich neighborhood, they are highly likely to attract law enforcement attention at a minimum. Not because they've broken the law, but because they are out of place and "disorderly". We really really like order, by the way. You can't just do away with the maintenance of order, although a strong argument could be made that we should not enforce it via state-licensed violence.
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    It’s unethical because of the kinds of laws the legislature requires them to enforce. Prime example: civil asset forfeiture.
- frellus 4y ago
  Again, I understand why most people think this way, and I'm not going to call you naive - just cynical. From my experience (not all of it, but a bunch of it) -- HR has been the balancing force against bad management and even CEOs because, like the lawyers, there're there to protect the company. I've not been in a room where the CEO is sitting there telling the lawyers and HR how to abuse employees -- sorry. Likewise, I agree there are plenty of cops who are POS, and there are plenty who are not. You're missing the part of the equation where people treat all cops like POS, and frankly -- if you've watched shows like COPS and seen what some of them deal with -- it's not hard to see why some of them probably become worse over time. Both sides of the equation needs to change if you want a better world.
  - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    > I'm not going to call you naive - just cynical OnlineGladiator said that you would call them cynical and they would call you naive, not the other way around.
  - serverholic 4y ago
    The equation is far from balanced. What we need is far more cynicism in order to cause change. We've tried less cynicism and it hasn't worked. It just leads to maintaining the status quo.
    - timellis-smith 4y ago
      cyncism or skepticism?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mikrl 4y ago
  >They're the kind of people who are your friends until suddenly they aren't Happened to me once, I got on the wrong side of some politics and had the awkward termination meeting. I was civil and cheerful throughout except where I had to be firm and fight my corner: “Pleasure to meet you! Sorry it was under these circumstances, I wish you the best time here!” and I could feel the barely concealed rage emanating from them. Being in a single party recording jurisdiction was the card up my sleeve, and when I let that slip (after the termination) they looked ready to blow a gasket. I learned valuable lessons that day about HR, mental health, and how webs can get spun that tangle up idealistic engineers… needless to say, I keep my head down and try to stay out of / avoid starting fights that I don’t stand a chance of winning.
- drstewart 4y ago
  From my perspective, it's very clear from your tone why you and HR don't get along. Professionalism is probably not your strong suit.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    There's no reason to believe they speak to their coworkers in this way. This is a different context. Edit out swipes please.
- amalcon 4y ago
  Cynicism tends to go hand in hand with defeatism. I have no problem with cynicism, if you're the rare person willing to take steps to fix or mitigate the problems you are cynical about. In the more common case, it just leads to giving up. Cynicism is a mistake when it leads to inaction, and inaction is responsible for a lot (arguably most) of the world's problems. I've known people who didn't recycle because they were (maybe still are, we've lost touch) cynical about whether enough other people would do it to matter. The cynicism is getting in the way of action. No, I don't have a suggestion for what to do about abuse of employees! I know this is not the most helpful, but I'm not the cynic about this. I'm a cynic about other things, but only when I do have a course of action.
  - patrec 4y ago
    It's so nice of you to grant people posthumous permission to have been cynical about Hitler's promises of peace or Nazi ideology in general, provided they were deeply committed to making Nazism actually awesome. You seem blind to the difference of being lazily cynical about something flawed but ultimately beneficial (and with flaws that you could help address) and seeing through cons dressed up in edifying language about noble causes. Ignore it at your own peril. A lot of very sincere communists met a sticky end under communism as a reward for the sincerity of their beliefs, and very sincerely trying to embody "googly" (etc.) values as espoused by HR may well proof equally terminal (if only to your career). Especially as a slightly aspergery nerd prone to take policy statements at face value. > inaction is responsible for a lot (arguably most) of the world's problems Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves
    - amalcon 4y ago
      Well that was a quick Godwin. If I wanted to, I could make a very strong case that cynicism was a factor that led to the rise of the Third Reich (I'd be paraphrasing a book I read some years ago). I'm not going to make that case because frankly the fact that you jumped right there is indicative that it's not a discussion worth having.
- laserdancepony 4y ago
  I disagree wholeheartedly. Calling one of the most foundational jobs in human civilization unethical is ridiculous. We need people who enforce a standard set of rules onto every member of society, and yes, it will always corrupt some who wield that power. We are humans, after all. But does that make the whole idea "unethical"? I presume not. I'd rather not live in anarchy.
starlust2 4y ago
> As a manager in a company, I've both had friends in HR and also had HR been my friend. Need to fire that horrible employee who is demoralizing the team and not being productive? HR is your friend. Need to hire the next best engineer? HR is my friend. That's not a friend, that's a co-worker doing their job. There's a big difference between a friend and someone you get a long with well in a professional setting.
dogleash 4y ago
> I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Cynicism is just self preservation on topics like this. Most people can’t afford the risk of behaving otherwise.
crmd 4y ago
I get what you’re saying but don’t think the Catbert analogy is apropos here. What I have seen as a senior tech executive and old person is that young people entering the workforce after around 2015-6 often rely on HR to be a neutral arbiter in workplace conflicts, analogous to parental chaperones or university administrators. What I believe the author is trying to convey is that this misunderstanding can have disastrous consequences on a young person’s career. HR is not a neutral arbiter between you and the business. They are the business.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  I think every gen gets to learn this lesson. Not just 2015-16. I have seen it many times in my 30yrs. Newbie gets in a twist over something (usually very justified). HR is then a role of the dice if they will help or just come down on everyone or just the two involved, etc... They usually are the arbiters of policy, that they made, rightly or wrongly.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>What I have seen as a senior tech executive and old person is that young people entering the workforce after around 2015-6 often rely on HR to be a neutral arbiter in workplace conflicts, analogous to parental chaperones or university administrators. Yep - seen it many times when employees (usually younger) say things like "I'm telling HR" or "I'm reporting you to HR", as if it's the same as "I'm telling Mom", and expecting HR to swoop in and rule in their favor on some workplace dispute - thats not there job, never was, never will be. While you (the complaining employee) are doing that, the back-channel communication to the manager is telling them how they should probably document 'whatever' in writing so that when you eventually get terminated they have a contemporaneous record of all your bad behavior to use against you. HR is not your friend, they are not supposed to be.
- dotgov 4y ago
  This hit the nail on the head for me. I entered the workforce a bit earlier than 2015 and I would have expected HR to be a neutral arbiter as well. My experience at different employers has proven my expectations to be wrong or at least naive. On every occasion I needed to interact with HR, information (eg. applicable laws) was selectively filtered to make it look like my only option was the one that was beneficial to the business. YMMV, but for me this is good advice and a welcome reminder.
droopyEyelids 4y ago
I think the concept you're missing is called "structural incentives"
throwawaysleep 4y ago
HR and management are effectively the same from an employee perspective (with slightly different motives), so the cynicism is equally applicable to you. Managers aren’t your friend either.
danwee 4y ago
Because employees are not at the same level as managers/HR. The latter have power over the formers. You like it or not, when horrible people happens to have power, well that's the worst combination possible. Employees cannot fire managers nor HR (it's in theory possible, but in practices it almost never happens). HR and managers can fire employees (this happens every week). Employees do not know how much money managers or HR make. Managers and HR know how much money employees make. Employees have to ask managers and HR for sick leave/vacation. Managers and HR do not have to ask employees for sick leave/vacation. And a long etc.
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
It's not cynicism. It's realism. The post acknowledges HR can be helpful.
- fundad 4y ago
  If you believe you deserve constant adulation for earning the title of manager/POTUS/CEO, the reality seems like a cynical attack on your ego.
duxup 4y ago
The cynicism does seem like a race to the bottom. It’s to the point that discussions are derailed by it with folks who feign knowledge about a topic just offer cynicism. Anything that’s doesn’t work right the empty response is a conspiracy of “oh that’s by design” as if people would otherwise always have things working… It’s endless online.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  It's always been possible to feign knowledge and wisdom with cynicism, even before public discourse was carried out "online". It's also always been possible to feign knowledge and wisdom with breathless enthusiasm or optimism. Fakery is fakery. In general, we are not cynical enough. Humans have been out to take advantage of each other for as long as we have recorded history, and probably for much longer than that. Civilization is maintained in equilibrium between forces that seek to destroy each other, so you can and should assume that those forces exist and are currently and actively attempting to pursue their own gain at your expense. The heart of propaganda is convincing people to act against their own best interests. This is built into the essence of humanity.
  - duxup 4y ago
    > we are not cynical enough What supports that conclusion? Fear of being deceived?
- nullsense 4y ago
  >It’s to the point that discussions are derailed by it with folks who feign knowledge about a topic just offer cynicism. Anything that’s doesn’t work right the empty response is a conspiracy of “oh that’s by design” as if people would otherwise always have things working… It's a safeguard against trying to fight against things that "shouldn't be like this" and burning yourself out. It's endless in the real world too. The reason cynicism runs so deep is that it's warranted. After a period of time you turn around and ask yourself "if everywhere I go and everything I take a close enough look at makes me think 'this shouldn't be like this!' then what is it that I'm missing???". Eventually when the human operating system that underpins it all comes into view, the cynicism sets in. Sure, it's a lazy-ish answer, but in my experience it's a pretty darn good heuristic as far as heuristics go.
andrewmutz 4y ago
> Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Can we make points and articles about protecting yourself, as an employee, without resorting to such things? I don't think this will happen anytime soon for two reasons. The first is that cynicism always sounds smart. "Don't take the vaccine, big pharma doesn't care at all about your health and just wants to make money." If you assume bad intentions, regardless of if you have any evidence of bad intentions, you sound smart and people will listen to you. The second is that cynicism is generally negative in tone, and as a result is much more likely to go viral on the internet. No one clicks on or shares articles that say "HR people are paid to protect the company, but they are good people like the rest of us".
teawrecks 4y ago
> HR aren’t evil, they’re just doing a job Managers on the other hand may or may not work in your best interests, just like any friend. Meanwhile, HR is literally tasked with protecting the company from me. So I would not lump the two into the same basket. I've been lucky enough to have experienced managers who see my current position as inherently temporary, and would consider it a personal failure to not help me develop my overall career as best I can. I know not all managers think like this, probably not even most managers, but the point is they are allowed to. HR is not.
- ravenstine 4y ago
  Not only is HR incentivized to defend the company over its employees whenever possible, but I think it's a position that attracts psychopaths. Being in HR takes no extraordinary talent whatsoever, yet HR has massive power over the destiny of individuals. They get to decide whether you have a chance at landing a job you want, make your rent next month, whether a coworker who bullies you gets to keep their job, and so forth. There's good HR people out there, but I've seen a substantial number of dumb, ego-tripping, completely unhelpful HR people as well. If you've got nothing going for you and you have an inferiority complex then HR is for you because you can take out your frustration by deleting resumes that use present participle instead of past participle.
  - teawrecks 4y ago
    Actually, in all those ways, middle management and HR are actually very similar lol.
dghughes 4y ago
Well then HR should stop pretending to be everyone's friend.
mythhouse 4y ago
> Need to fire that horrible employee who is demoralizing the team and not being productive? HR is your friend. Maybe if you are ending up with so many of these 'horrible employees' that you need to make friends with HR then maybe problem is somewhere else.
- watwut 4y ago
  One is enough to make it sux for everybody. And fairly often, the team is assigned people without leader having the say in advance - especially when it comes to people from other teams.
ravenstine 4y ago
> Why round everything up to the cynical points just to get clicks? Clicks translate to moolah and social capital.
ravenstine 4y ago
> Need to hire the next best engineer? HR is my friend. So long as HR is actually equipped to do that. Such does not seem to be the case the vast majority of the time.
dogman144 4y ago
I have work friends, colleagues, but usually I only ever make 1x friend who I actually trust to speak plainly with and will stay in touch with after work. For sure, these actual friends at work are great. A mental health buffer, a comrade in arms, a network of two professionals working through companies and careers together. However, the plainspeak never occurs on company comms platforms. I don’t make that friend until I’m 9 months in and can suss out who’s worth trusting. I always keep some things to myself if that friend is a current coworker vs an ex coworker. That friend is never someone up or down the org chart from me. It’s not cynical, it’s 10 years of experience surviving and seeing other people blow themselves up because they mistake a workplace for anything but. The more of this you do, the more openings you make to be on the receiving end of workplace politics, and that’s incredibly hard to (a) win at and (b) get out of when it turns south, and it frequently will. And either way, if workplace politics is a concern, you don’t get through it by making friends-friends, you do it by making work friends, building leverage, and aggressively staying out of the way of people who want to pull the social element into work.
fundad 4y ago
I wouldn't go around admitting that some horrible people are allowed to maintain power as HR managers and then ask where the cynicism is coming from.
SkipperCat 4y ago
You can sum it up by saying "work is not your family".
foobiekr 4y ago
The basic problem with the "you guys are too negative" mindset is that abusers are very common. I'm sure { manager, HR }-you-can-be-friends-with exists. I've at least got very solid friendships with multiple management chains (note the plural, as i think it matters), so I know it is _possible_, the problem is it is _rare_. To quote one of the HR people I worked with, when I said I was having trouble putting someone just diagnosed with brain cancer on a PIP, "What's the big deal? I just fired someone who just had a heart attack." The people attracted to the HR career path are basically not good people, either because they aren't particularly bright or driven or because the ones that succeed are basically machiavellian.

OnlineGladiator 4y ago

> Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Personally, I'm so sick of there not being nearly enough cynicism in general. I've met cops that aren't total pieces of shit (who all ended up quitting in less than 5 years), but that doesn't mean cops aren't total pieces of shit. If the nature of the job is unethical, you should rightly call it out as such. HR's job is to pretend to be your friend while doing whatever the CEO and the lawyers tell them to do. They're the kind of people who are your friends until suddenly they aren't, and then you realize it was all bullshit to begin with. You're welcome to disagree. But from my perspective you're naive, and from your perspective I'm cynical.

acover 4y ago
Why is the nature of being a cop unethical? I agree there are abuses of the power but from what I've seen in real life it's important work.
- OnlineGladiator 4y ago
  I should mention I am referring specifically to police in the United States. The short answer is because cops defend cops, including bad cops. People like to say it's just a few bad apples, but it's far more prevalent than that. And even if it were just 1 in 100, the fact that the cops band together to protect a rapist/murderer/whatever shows that they care more about unity than morals. I realize this answer is lacking, but I've had this argument so many times and it drains hours out of my day to pursue it - because the supporting data is complicated and people are correct to provide counter arguments (and then I have to respond and it goes back and forth for a while). I encourage you to do your own research on statistics regarding police officers in the US. The one everybody likes to cite is how many police officer's beat their wives - 40%. And even this data point is very complicated and requires a lot of nuance and so on. But since people enjoy stories, here's one egregious example of a sheriff's department abusing their power. Even I think this is exceptionally awful and most police departments aren't this bad, but it's well researched and makes for a good read. https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history/ https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-history...
  - kenjackson 4y ago
    I tend to think there is a huge selection bias problem. The people that I knew in HS who wanted to be cops (and two did), were exactly the people you did NOT want to meet in a dark alleyway. They abused the power their physical strength gave them in HS... what makes you think they'd act differently with legal strength? And the people that I think are those who most want to help those in need and are compassionate, careful, and would take accountability seriously are those who don't want to do the job. There is also a kinship/bond that grows, which is hard to break. It's natural. You see it among sports fans, school alumni, console fan boys, company workers, etc... You see things through exceptionally biased glasses. Try to find a sports fan who feels like their team tends to be FAVORED by refs? You won't find them -- they all seem to think the refs are against their team -- every team's fans feel this way. Every team's fans feel like the fight on the field was instigated by the other team. Given these things, how do you mitigate against them, and construct a police force that is reasonable? I personally think it has to be external oversight, but this hasn't been easy to implement historically.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - mhink 4y ago
    > People like to say it's just a few bad apples, but it's far more prevalent than that. Not discounting your point at all, but the best response when someone says this is to point out that the saying is "a few bad apples spoil the bunch". It's very literal- an apple that's going bad releases fumes that cause other apples nearby to spoil. So it's very important to find them and get rid of them before that happens. Completing the analogy is an exercise left to the reader.
  - acover 4y ago
    Thanks for explaining. My experience is mostly with Canadian cops, which have some significant differences from American cops[0]. Though, consequences for cops are still rare[1]. However poorly executed, to me the service they provide is valuable and the cops I've seen at homeless shelters displayed patience. [0] - https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-canadian-cops-far-less-likely-to-kill-or-be-killed-than-u-s-counterparts https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-can... [1] - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/deadly-force-police-criminal-charges-1.4607134 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/deadly-force-police-...
- javajosh 4y ago
  Power is corrupting, and police have a de facto shit-ton of real, immediate power over everyone in their vicinity. They have a "martial law bubble" around them that allows them to physically assault you, put you in jail, and upend your whole life with very little effort. You will have no recourse, and they will suffer no consequences. You may file a complaint with the department, and it will be followed up on, poorly, by a fellow officer who is highly motivated to see nothing but another disgruntled loser trying to get petty revenge. The judges don't care and work with the DA and the same officers all the time, and maintain cordial, cooperative relationships with them, all of which is damaged if there is any adversarial action. It is within this context an average intelligence, perhaps even above-average moral person enters after 6-weeks of training. This person likes watching football and drinking beer. They help their elderly neighbors with the trash. They are a "normal" man who will stand up for himself, physically, in extreme cases. Now give him a gun and a badge and a martial law bubble. How do you think this normal, average man will evolve when he realizes his power? When he sees his friends on the force us it, daily, to get what they want, to make their jobs a little easier? When does he learn to enjoy that feeling of power, for itself, the way it feels to beat someone and put his knee on someone's neck because they talked back to you, and know that no-one can do shit about it? And you can even rationalize it - they shouldn't have been rude, they should know how much power I have and that I'm only human, its really just punishment for being stupid. Plus, the public still loves me and is grateful to me, considering me in high esteem as a moral upstanding citizen - so we must be doing something right!
  - d0gsg0w00f 4y ago
    In my life experience an unsavory character turned law abiding citizen I found that I used to think ill of cops but after I changed, miraculously cops seemed to turn into amazing fantastic people. So I take all of these "cops are evil" claims with a grain of salt and seek out more context clues to what would initiate an interaction with LEO in the first place.
    - velp 4y ago
      This reads like "the problem disappears as soon as I'm no longer impacted". Just because cops see/treat you differently now doesn't mean they aren't still treating others poorly.
- Parcle 4y ago
  Consider all the people harassed and locked up for decades over posession of marijuana. Sure laws have change but ethics never did. The obvious problem I see seems to be that cops exist to lock people up. When locking people up is often an inhumane and ineffective solution to the problem at hand.
- fundad 4y ago
  Because policing covers up violence and murder committed by their own.
- warcher 4y ago
  Police are tasked with maintaining law and order. Laws are equal for all people. Order is a set of subjective social rules that keeps everything in its "correct" place. Maintaining order often requires not enforcing the law equally. This is the essential moral difficulty of the police. If you have people who appear poor in a rich neighborhood, they are highly likely to attract law enforcement attention at a minimum. Not because they've broken the law, but because they are out of place and "disorderly". We really really like order, by the way. You can't just do away with the maintenance of order, although a strong argument could be made that we should not enforce it via state-licensed violence.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  It’s unethical because of the kinds of laws the legislature requires them to enforce. Prime example: civil asset forfeiture.
frellus 4y ago
Again, I understand why most people think this way, and I'm not going to call you naive - just cynical. From my experience (not all of it, but a bunch of it) -- HR has been the balancing force against bad management and even CEOs because, like the lawyers, there're there to protect the company. I've not been in a room where the CEO is sitting there telling the lawyers and HR how to abuse employees -- sorry. Likewise, I agree there are plenty of cops who are POS, and there are plenty who are not. You're missing the part of the equation where people treat all cops like POS, and frankly -- if you've watched shows like COPS and seen what some of them deal with -- it's not hard to see why some of them probably become worse over time. Both sides of the equation needs to change if you want a better world.
- OnlineGladiator 4y ago
  [flagged]
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > I'm not going to call you naive - just cynical OnlineGladiator said that you would call them cynical and they would call you naive, not the other way around.
- serverholic 4y ago
  The equation is far from balanced. What we need is far more cynicism in order to cause change. We've tried less cynicism and it hasn't worked. It just leads to maintaining the status quo.
  - timellis-smith 4y ago
    cyncism or skepticism?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mikrl 4y ago
>They're the kind of people who are your friends until suddenly they aren't Happened to me once, I got on the wrong side of some politics and had the awkward termination meeting. I was civil and cheerful throughout except where I had to be firm and fight my corner: “Pleasure to meet you! Sorry it was under these circumstances, I wish you the best time here!” and I could feel the barely concealed rage emanating from them. Being in a single party recording jurisdiction was the card up my sleeve, and when I let that slip (after the termination) they looked ready to blow a gasket. I learned valuable lessons that day about HR, mental health, and how webs can get spun that tangle up idealistic engineers… needless to say, I keep my head down and try to stay out of / avoid starting fights that I don’t stand a chance of winning.
drstewart 4y ago
From my perspective, it's very clear from your tone why you and HR don't get along. Professionalism is probably not your strong suit.
- maxbond 4y ago
  There's no reason to believe they speak to their coworkers in this way. This is a different context. Edit out swipes please.
amalcon 4y ago
Cynicism tends to go hand in hand with defeatism. I have no problem with cynicism, if you're the rare person willing to take steps to fix or mitigate the problems you are cynical about. In the more common case, it just leads to giving up. Cynicism is a mistake when it leads to inaction, and inaction is responsible for a lot (arguably most) of the world's problems. I've known people who didn't recycle because they were (maybe still are, we've lost touch) cynical about whether enough other people would do it to matter. The cynicism is getting in the way of action. No, I don't have a suggestion for what to do about abuse of employees! I know this is not the most helpful, but I'm not the cynic about this. I'm a cynic about other things, but only when I do have a course of action.
- patrec 4y ago
  It's so nice of you to grant people posthumous permission to have been cynical about Hitler's promises of peace or Nazi ideology in general, provided they were deeply committed to making Nazism actually awesome. You seem blind to the difference of being lazily cynical about something flawed but ultimately beneficial (and with flaws that you could help address) and seeing through cons dressed up in edifying language about noble causes. Ignore it at your own peril. A lot of very sincere communists met a sticky end under communism as a reward for the sincerity of their beliefs, and very sincerely trying to embody "googly" (etc.) values as espoused by HR may well proof equally terminal (if only to your career). Especially as a slightly aspergery nerd prone to take policy statements at face value. > inaction is responsible for a lot (arguably most) of the world's problems Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves
  - amalcon 4y ago
    Well that was a quick Godwin. If I wanted to, I could make a very strong case that cynicism was a factor that led to the rise of the Third Reich (I'd be paraphrasing a book I read some years ago). I'm not going to make that case because frankly the fact that you jumped right there is indicative that it's not a discussion worth having.
laserdancepony 4y ago
I disagree wholeheartedly. Calling one of the most foundational jobs in human civilization unethical is ridiculous. We need people who enforce a standard set of rules onto every member of society, and yes, it will always corrupt some who wield that power. We are humans, after all. But does that make the whole idea "unethical"? I presume not. I'd rather not live in anarchy.

starlust2 4y ago

> As a manager in a company, I've both had friends in HR and also had HR been my friend. Need to fire that horrible employee who is demoralizing the team and not being productive? HR is your friend. Need to hire the next best engineer? HR is my friend. That's not a friend, that's a co-worker doing their job. There's a big difference between a friend and someone you get a long with well in a professional setting.

dogleash 4y ago

> I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Cynicism is just self preservation on topics like this. Most people can’t afford the risk of behaving otherwise.

crmd 4y ago

I get what you’re saying but don’t think the Catbert analogy is apropos here. What I have seen as a senior tech executive and old person is that young people entering the workforce after around 2015-6 often rely on HR to be a neutral arbiter in workplace conflicts, analogous to parental chaperones or university administrators. What I believe the author is trying to convey is that this misunderstanding can have disastrous consequences on a young person’s career. HR is not a neutral arbiter between you and the business. They are the business.

sumtechguy 4y ago
I think every gen gets to learn this lesson. Not just 2015-16. I have seen it many times in my 30yrs. Newbie gets in a twist over something (usually very justified). HR is then a role of the dice if they will help or just come down on everyone or just the two involved, etc... They usually are the arbiters of policy, that they made, rightly or wrongly.
ejb999 4y ago
>>What I have seen as a senior tech executive and old person is that young people entering the workforce after around 2015-6 often rely on HR to be a neutral arbiter in workplace conflicts, analogous to parental chaperones or university administrators. Yep - seen it many times when employees (usually younger) say things like "I'm telling HR" or "I'm reporting you to HR", as if it's the same as "I'm telling Mom", and expecting HR to swoop in and rule in their favor on some workplace dispute - thats not there job, never was, never will be. While you (the complaining employee) are doing that, the back-channel communication to the manager is telling them how they should probably document 'whatever' in writing so that when you eventually get terminated they have a contemporaneous record of all your bad behavior to use against you. HR is not your friend, they are not supposed to be.
dotgov 4y ago
This hit the nail on the head for me. I entered the workforce a bit earlier than 2015 and I would have expected HR to be a neutral arbiter as well. My experience at different employers has proven my expectations to be wrong or at least naive. On every occasion I needed to interact with HR, information (eg. applicable laws) was selectively filtered to make it look like my only option was the one that was beneficial to the business. YMMV, but for me this is good advice and a welcome reminder.

droopyEyelids 4y ago

I think the concept you're missing is called "structural incentives"

throwawaysleep 4y ago

HR and management are effectively the same from an employee perspective (with slightly different motives), so the cynicism is equally applicable to you. Managers aren’t your friend either.

danwee 4y ago

Because employees are not at the same level as managers/HR. The latter have power over the formers. You like it or not, when horrible people happens to have power, well that's the worst combination possible. Employees cannot fire managers nor HR (it's in theory possible, but in practices it almost never happens). HR and managers can fire employees (this happens every week). Employees do not know how much money managers or HR make. Managers and HR know how much money employees make. Employees have to ask managers and HR for sick leave/vacation. Managers and HR do not have to ask employees for sick leave/vacation. And a long etc.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

It's not cynicism. It's realism. The post acknowledges HR can be helpful.

fundad 4y ago
If you believe you deserve constant adulation for earning the title of manager/POTUS/CEO, the reality seems like a cynical attack on your ego.

duxup 4y ago

The cynicism does seem like a race to the bottom. It’s to the point that discussions are derailed by it with folks who feign knowledge about a topic just offer cynicism. Anything that’s doesn’t work right the empty response is a conspiracy of “oh that’s by design” as if people would otherwise always have things working… It’s endless online.

nerdponx 4y ago
It's always been possible to feign knowledge and wisdom with cynicism, even before public discourse was carried out "online". It's also always been possible to feign knowledge and wisdom with breathless enthusiasm or optimism. Fakery is fakery. In general, we are not cynical enough. Humans have been out to take advantage of each other for as long as we have recorded history, and probably for much longer than that. Civilization is maintained in equilibrium between forces that seek to destroy each other, so you can and should assume that those forces exist and are currently and actively attempting to pursue their own gain at your expense. The heart of propaganda is convincing people to act against their own best interests. This is built into the essence of humanity.
- duxup 4y ago
  > we are not cynical enough What supports that conclusion? Fear of being deceived?
nullsense 4y ago
>It’s to the point that discussions are derailed by it with folks who feign knowledge about a topic just offer cynicism. Anything that’s doesn’t work right the empty response is a conspiracy of “oh that’s by design” as if people would otherwise always have things working… It's a safeguard against trying to fight against things that "shouldn't be like this" and burning yourself out. It's endless in the real world too. The reason cynicism runs so deep is that it's warranted. After a period of time you turn around and ask yourself "if everywhere I go and everything I take a close enough look at makes me think 'this shouldn't be like this!' then what is it that I'm missing???". Eventually when the human operating system that underpins it all comes into view, the cynicism sets in. Sure, it's a lazy-ish answer, but in my experience it's a pretty darn good heuristic as far as heuristics go.

andrewmutz 4y ago

> Personally, I'm so sick of the cynicism in general. Can we make points and articles about protecting yourself, as an employee, without resorting to such things? I don't think this will happen anytime soon for two reasons. The first is that cynicism always sounds smart. "Don't take the vaccine, big pharma doesn't care at all about your health and just wants to make money." If you assume bad intentions, regardless of if you have any evidence of bad intentions, you sound smart and people will listen to you. The second is that cynicism is generally negative in tone, and as a result is much more likely to go viral on the internet. No one clicks on or shares articles that say "HR people are paid to protect the company, but they are good people like the rest of us".

teawrecks 4y ago

> HR aren’t evil, they’re just doing a job Managers on the other hand may or may not work in your best interests, just like any friend. Meanwhile, HR is literally tasked with protecting the company from me. So I would not lump the two into the same basket. I've been lucky enough to have experienced managers who see my current position as inherently temporary, and would consider it a personal failure to not help me develop my overall career as best I can. I know not all managers think like this, probably not even most managers, but the point is they are allowed to. HR is not.

ravenstine 4y ago
Not only is HR incentivized to defend the company over its employees whenever possible, but I think it's a position that attracts psychopaths. Being in HR takes no extraordinary talent whatsoever, yet HR has massive power over the destiny of individuals. They get to decide whether you have a chance at landing a job you want, make your rent next month, whether a coworker who bullies you gets to keep their job, and so forth. There's good HR people out there, but I've seen a substantial number of dumb, ego-tripping, completely unhelpful HR people as well. If you've got nothing going for you and you have an inferiority complex then HR is for you because you can take out your frustration by deleting resumes that use present participle instead of past participle.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  Actually, in all those ways, middle management and HR are actually very similar lol.

dghughes 4y ago

Well then HR should stop pretending to be everyone's friend.

mythhouse 4y ago

> Need to fire that horrible employee who is demoralizing the team and not being productive? HR is your friend. Maybe if you are ending up with so many of these 'horrible employees' that you need to make friends with HR then maybe problem is somewhere else.

watwut 4y ago
One is enough to make it sux for everybody. And fairly often, the team is assigned people without leader having the say in advance - especially when it comes to people from other teams.

ravenstine 4y ago

> Why round everything up to the cynical points just to get clicks? Clicks translate to moolah and social capital.

ravenstine 4y ago

> Need to hire the next best engineer? HR is my friend. So long as HR is actually equipped to do that. Such does not seem to be the case the vast majority of the time.

dogman144 4y ago

I have work friends, colleagues, but usually I only ever make 1x friend who I actually trust to speak plainly with and will stay in touch with after work. For sure, these actual friends at work are great. A mental health buffer, a comrade in arms, a network of two professionals working through companies and careers together. However, the plainspeak never occurs on company comms platforms. I don’t make that friend until I’m 9 months in and can suss out who’s worth trusting. I always keep some things to myself if that friend is a current coworker vs an ex coworker. That friend is never someone up or down the org chart from me. It’s not cynical, it’s 10 years of experience surviving and seeing other people blow themselves up because they mistake a workplace for anything but. The more of this you do, the more openings you make to be on the receiving end of workplace politics, and that’s incredibly hard to (a) win at and (b) get out of when it turns south, and it frequently will. And either way, if workplace politics is a concern, you don’t get through it by making friends-friends, you do it by making work friends, building leverage, and aggressively staying out of the way of people who want to pull the social element into work.

fundad 4y ago

I wouldn't go around admitting that some horrible people are allowed to maintain power as HR managers and then ask where the cynicism is coming from.

SkipperCat 4y ago

You can sum it up by saying "work is not your family".

foobiekr 4y ago

The basic problem with the "you guys are too negative" mindset is that abusers are very common. I'm sure { manager, HR }-you-can-be-friends-with exists. I've at least got very solid friendships with multiple management chains (note the plural, as i think it matters), so I know it is _possible_, the problem is it is _rare_. To quote one of the HR people I worked with, when I said I was having trouble putting someone just diagnosed with brain cancer on a PIP, "What's the big deal? I just fired someone who just had a heart attack." The people attracted to the HR career path are basically not good people, either because they aren't particularly bright or driven or because the ones that succeed are basically machiavellian.