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Employees are bypassing HR, sharing on LinkedIn

• Aloha 2y ago
  https://archive.ph/rjIbg https://archive.ph/rjIbg
• crmd 2y ago
  As an old person, I’m very much of the mindset, “Keep your mouth shut as much as possible, never air dirty laundry publicly, and don’t pick fights with your company who has infinitely greater legal budget than you do.” However, I’ve come to seriously respect younger workers who don’t take shit from anyone and will gladly burn a company to the ground on social media if they feel like they are being abused in the workplace.
  • SoftTalker 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • kelseyfrog 2y ago
      We should aspire to a society where people don't worry about paying rent. Whether this is through worker empowerment or other means, it is justified:)
      • summeroflove20 2y ago
        [dead]
  • bloomingkales 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • bbqfog 2y ago
      It doesn't seem stupid at all. It seems brave and like it has a lot of business value. Why not expose the poor performing managers who are structurally protected by bureaucratic rot. Being a good person is good for business.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • santoshalper 2y ago
        The phenomenon you're observing is broken-down drones who are bitter that other workers are refusing to tolerate the abuse that they accepted.
        • Analemma_ 2y ago
          Yeah, the "I had to suffer pointlessly, so you do too" effect and the accompanying post hoc rationalization for why the suffering was actually good are a depressingly powerful force to maintain the status quo, and are already all over this post.
          • deleted 2y ago
            [deleted]
      • ethbr1 2y ago
        The delineating line here is: - Is the employee including enough information and examples, and are those specific and strong enough, to communicate the toxic behavior? - Does the employee strip out emotion from their post? If yes, it tends to be well received. I.e. "Yes, that is shitty behavior that shouldn't happen in a workplace" That's the difference between spotlighting and venting. The former highlights something that objectively exists; the latter is more about you.
      • jjmarr 2y ago
        For a lot of toxic people, the business views them as "high performers" and their harassment of others as a personal flaw. "Separate the art from the artist". Sometimes, being a good person is seen as bad for business, since there's a meme that business is about being ruthless in success. I blame it on movies and TV.
    • no_wizard 2y ago
      I prefer the public accountability of corporations as opposed to anything else. It’s more honest, and is one of the few things regular folks can do that leaves a very obvious paper trail if something goes sideways. I would say this is a positive development for society. Corporations have benefitted for too long by cultivating fear of speaking out. I’m glad it’s changing. I genuinely don’t understand why this is a bad thing
      • bloomingkales 2y ago
        Because at scale it creates a culture of whiny little shits that take on this ridiculous world view and are toxic with their Histrionics. Quite frankly they don't shut the fuck up, and they need a healthy shut the fuck up you are not that important, get over yourself. This job isn't a fit? Move on.
        • no_wizard 2y ago
          If something isn’t a good fit it doesn’t mean that the work place or boss gets to justify being toxic and then claim “well they weren’t a good fit” I’ve worked in roles that were very much not a good fit but I wasn’t treated bad at the same time, it was simply clear there was a mismatch. They aren’t the same thing at all. Accountability is extremely important and it must run both ways. Corporate culture has been top down for far too long
          • bloomingkales 2y ago
            Today the 34-year-old has more than 80,000 followers. A few times a week she publishes a post — often several hundred words — and a selfie in which she's holding up a whiteboard with a handwritten summary of that post, like "A toxic boss will use a performance improvement plan to control you, not to help you." A toxic boss, she writes in one post, will "shower you with praise when you meet their expectations but withhold recognition" and "exploit your fear of failure to push you beyond reasonable limits." Each post typically gets thousands of comments (most empathetic, some disparaging) from workers around the world. Listen to the story. This person's entire identity is now THIS. She is now the anti-work-bosses-are-bad-gimme-my-80k-followers. Two wrongs don't make a right. I cannot support this nonsense. If you can't see the phenomenon here at scale, then we're truly at odds and I can't see a middle ground between our camps.
    • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      This is hilariously a-historic, and companies are still getting off with an absolute slap-on-the-wrist both from actual regulators, and from these maverick employees who trash them on social media. If they still don't like that maybe we need to go all the way back to what got us the weekends we love and 40 hour work weeks: blowing up rail bridges and throwing bricks of C4 in police cars. It blows my mind how thin-skinned businesses are now. Everybody talks about America's golden age from the end of WWII to the Reagan era when America dominated world markets (because we were the only unscathed nation from that conflict, and we had half of money worldwide) but nobody goes back further and I can't help but think that's because American businesses are quite content, contrary to public statements, with trashing campaigns on social media, specifically because consumer revolt doesn't and never has worked. If you want to know what did work, again: coal miners blew up rail bridges, locomotives, destroyed company assets by the ton, and killed thousands of Pinkerton strike breakers and their partners in law enforcement. Consumer boycott didn't get us weekends. Explosives did.
      • no_wizard 2y ago
        I agree with the sentiment, though violence is, to me, the solution of last resort. We should at least try actually organizing labor first. On the note of thin skinned corporations: it’s an outgrowth of the thin skin that corporate leadership has. Executives don’t like accountability or feedback that differs from their worldview. I’ve seen it so much, especially with these workplace surveys where the same issues come up and they never ever implement the proper solution to fix the issues.
        • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
          > I agree with the sentiment, though violence is, to me, the solution of last resort. Oh for sure. I've already lived through enough historically significant times for my taste, though I suspect the ongoing issues are going to create more of them anyway no matter what I personally want to experience. People are suffering and social media is making it impossible to ignore, and increasingly the younger generations barely have lives worth considering as a loss if they end up the victims of state violence, which increases radicalization and you get more people ready to pick up guns. > We should at least try actually organizing labor first. It is good to see so much support for unions in the US again. They got a bad rap for a long time but people are coming back around in a big way now that we've had so many years of corporations basically being the shot callers in our supposedly representative Democracy nation. > On the note of thin skinned corporations: it’s an outgrowth of the thin skin that corporate leadership has. Executives don’t like accountability or feedback that differs from their worldview. I’ve seen it so much, especially with these workplace surveys where the same issues come up and they never ever implement the proper solution to fix the issues. Absolutely, and that's been a thing as long as mediocre wealthy people were lording their success over the peasant farmers they owned under feudalism. The noble of whatever land could have any of his subjects murdered at will but that power, while cool, doesn't change the fact that the same lord would probably be dead within a month if he had to live the lives of his subjects. He was always a useless bastard if you took away his money, and every great leap forward for common folks in human history occurred when enough people realized that and decided to take away his money, and possibly his head in the process. Our modern feudal lords are no different. Mark Zuckerberg is a mediocre college dropout programmer who built a website to rate the looks of his female classmates, and the sole reason he's still (mis)managing Meta is that he's institutionally unable to be fired for his incredibly poor performance at that job. Elon Musk has never done anything in his life that wasn't solely at the behest of the fortunes he was given (loaned, what the fuck ever) from his father. His only marketable skill is writing checks and the abysmal failure of the Cybertruck is a monument to his hubris. Tons of CEOs all over tech now aren't the people who actually built any of it, nor understand it, but are pure business graduates who's only ideas involve playing with fake numbers on spreadsheets to continue fooling Wall Street into thinking they can just grow forever, despite on how-on-it's-face ridiculous that is as a concept.
    • blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      I agree it’s a risk to career connections but disagree that it is “stupid”. We need protections for speech such that people don’t have to fear repercussions.
      • bruce511 2y ago
        You can "protect" all you like, but speaking publicly about your employer has repercussions and you can't wish that away. Let's say I'm an employer filling a position. I narrow found the candidates to a handful, any one would be fine. So I start contacting ex-bosses, references, doing Google searches etc. Hmm, one of them has disparaged their employer online. I don't know who was right, and frankly I don't care. I'm never going to think "ah, there's someone we really want - someone who goes online when they don't get what they want." You can't "protect speech" this away.
    • downrightmike 2y ago
      AI is set to replace them by 2030, they don't care
    • Jgrubb 2y ago
      > ultimately realizes the phenomenon of youth stupidity and grows out of it. If only that were true. Some people never experience consequences and so there's nothing for them to learn.
      • bloomingkales 2y ago
        That is the Greek tragedy that the universe has warned us about. You better get wisdom in your life somehow, and the pre-requisite is growing up. If doesn't click before you are dead, that's the tragedy they have been warning about since forever. Like yeah, you can die on this hill. But if you really need a job one day because someone in your life is sick and needs caretaking (this is just one example, not a strawman anecdote, life is no joke, thats a causal thing that can easily happen) ... Oh you died on that stupid hill on Linkedin 5 years ago over bullshit right? Because nothing else in life could possibly be more important right? That's just how I see it. I see children.
    • pjc50 2y ago
      I'm reminded of the missing stair / metoo discourse, where it gradually emerges that lots of people knew that X was sexually assaulting employees, but they'd not dared to go public about it for fear of reprisal. And of course the "proper channels" is often the worse of both worlds: you get the reprisals, but without the help of your fellow victims or the public.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  • blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Most people have fear about this sort of thing. Even once you quit. Like maybe if you post something you won’t get hired back. Employee speech outside of work environments should be protected. But I think as long as people have something to lose, they will censor themselves. Young people have little to lose.
  • tmpz22 2y ago
    What companies have been burned to the ground on Social Media? Equifax? Wells Fargo? Tesla? Twitter? Uber? I support civil disobedience but aren't many attempts at civil disobedience by lone actors largely ineffective? I think its important to call out ineffective civil activism so that individuals can create more effective strategies for creating actual change for the social good.
    • TheSkyHasEyes 2y ago
      They probably meant smaller companies. I too have noticed this and agree with the commenter above.
• NuSkooler 2y ago
  Love every bit of this type of stuff that mostly only the younger generations are doing. Maybe someday, our society will move away from slaving away in terrible environments to realistically only raise up a handful of humans.
  • somethoughts 2y ago
    To be honest - the great thing is that even if a small percentage of people choose the LinkedIn/Social Media shame route, it benefits everyone. Just the threat of this will probably make employers/managers think about the potential consequences of such actions. That said - it'd be recommended that the employee have a pretty air tight story since there internet can easily turn the other way.
• iknownthing 2y ago
  Probably better to do it on anonymous social media
  • bbqfog 2y ago
    I'd hire someone brave enough to stand up for themselves and against a toxic workplace. That's how you affect real change. Sometimes it pays to put ego out the window for something that's radically better.
    • tsimionescu 2y ago
      Unfortunately, that's very much not how the managerial class thinks. Workers that speak up and publicly diss their employer are dangerous for any manager and business, because they won't shut up and do as they're told. Very few will knowingly hire someone who risks calling out their own bullshit.
    • 8note 2y ago
      notifying future candidates such that they dont join also creates real change. the company cant hire anyone and goes out of business
  • softwaredoug 2y ago
    Maybe but I think at this point we tune out places like Blind as a nonstop stream of groundless bellyaching and unfounded rumors about layoffs next week. It’s hard to know what’s true or not in such an environment.
  • owebmaster 2y ago
    not if you want to become an influencer
• bbqfog 2y ago
  Toxic bosses are one of the most damaging things you can have in a company. It's counter-intuitive but smart leadership would be thanking these people for exposing the rot in their own companies.
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  HR and Legal work for the company and will often manipulate people and situations to reduce their risks and justify their actions. So this isn’t surprising. But also I think public discussion of issues is the only way for people to move towards defending workplace conditions.
• eschulz 2y ago
  HR is to protect the company, first and foremost. Sure, they'll discuss protecting the worker's rights, but that's in order to protect the company from a scenario where a worker's rights have been violated and they have a legitimate complaint against the company.
  • no_wizard 2y ago
    Which is why I thought this line of reasoning from the article is extremely disingenuous > Tim Glowa, the founder and CEO of HR Brain, says that "rather than venting online, reporting helps build a proper case while ensuring confidentiality and protecting your professional reputation," adding, "What you post online can follow you indefinitely." If you read between the lines on this it’s clear as day that they are saying speaking up is bad for your career, without saying those words explicitly. Executives, VPs and SVPs hate being held accountable by their workers, that’s my main takeaway here
    • eschulz 2y ago
      Yes, his product is protection offered to companies and company officers.
    • Spooky23 2y ago
      There’s more nuance. When you go public with an accusation or problem, you can’t control when, who or how it is used. It’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to frame the narrative effectively to get something of value. For example, an issue related to something that you expressed in your public can be picked up, embraced and extended and turned into a racial or other high attention/impact issue. The press can run with it and create a mess. More likely, nobody cares, and you’ll be painted as a crazy person, and crazy people go away.
• spacecakes 2y ago
  [dead]
• ethbr1 2y ago
  >> [Workers] tend to see human resources as an extension of corporate dogma meant to reinforce company policies. It is. HR may do other stuff above and beyond, but their first priority will always be compliance. Consequently, whether or not HR is the appropriate venue to address your problem boils down to -- "Is this a compliance issue for the company? And if so, will resolving it be in my favor?" (E.g. sexual harassment) If yes/yes, go to HR. If anything else, find another line of redress.
  • RachelF 2y ago
    Interesting that the examples in the article are from Australia. Perhaps employee protection is better in Australia than in the US?
    • skissane 2y ago
      Australian law has “unfair dismissal” - if your employer terminates you for “unfair” reasons, then you can take them to court, and if you win you either get reinstated or compensated. Very different from the “at-will employment” which prevails in much of the US. (I put "unfair" in quotes because it is ultimately about what a court concludes is unfair, based on the legislation and case law, which might not be the same as what you or I think is unfair.) It is worth pointing out it only applies if your annual salary is less than the "high income threshold", which is currently AU$175,000 (approximately US$107,000). They increase that amount every year, and their definition of "income" excludes certain things (such as bonuses). If your income is above that, you can't sue under unfair dismissal law, although you still can sue for common law breach of contract (which is more difficult, however–employers generally try to word employment contracts to maximise their freedom to terminate you, although there is always the chance a court will find the relevant terms of the contract legally invalid, at least as applied to your particular case.) https://www.fwc.gov.au/high-income-threshold https://www.fwc.gov.au/high-income-threshold
  • jimbob45 2y ago
    HR needs to adopt a mantra similar to medicine’s “First, do no harm”. If there was any question over whether doctors would ever knowingly hurt patients, the entire profession would halve its patientload over night. Likewise, HR departments are by-and-large good places with helpful and supportive people. However, the fact that they have the ability at all to report your conversations to management means no one trusts them and they become ineffective as a result.
• renewiltord 2y ago
  There's always Blind if you're worried about your reputation.
  • OutOfHere 2y ago
    Glassdoor too.
    • smcleod 2y ago
      Glassdoor is very problematic. They pull negative reviews all the time and tend to side with employers on almost all feedback disputes.
      • akulbe 2y ago
        Not only is it problematic... the real anonymity is gone, as well. I would not recommend using it anymore.
        • OutOfHere 2y ago
          I would use a throwaway email address, and not give them my real name. It works fine if used in this way. Also, I would run it in a private window only, so there is no cookie left behind. It doesn't work well with ad-blockers, but the private window takes care of them.
        • aitchnyu 2y ago
          Anonymity gone? Whats the news?
• r053bud 2y ago
  HR are literally corporate cops. They are never on your side, next thing you know you, are not a good “cultural fit” for complaining. I’ve never once brought an issue to HR.
• softwaredoug 2y ago
  I don’t think this is “bypassing HR” These folks are using their negative experiences to become influencers or teach others. I doubt the LinkedIn subtweeting at a boss actually impacts the specific toxic boss. Some people are horrible to colleagues and peers and can work the system to progress their careers. Some organizations reward this unconsciously (because everyone is such a person!). I don’t think there’s much an individual can do to change such a culture. You just need to leave and find a better one.
• neilv 2y ago
  I'd talk on HN before LinkedIn. LinkedIn is 99%+ corporate-slime and self-promoting behavior, and that fact makes me suspect anything someone says there. HN is far from perfect, but, for example, there's enough people posting pseudonymously, and I think a good percentage of those are saying something because they want to say it or think it should be said. Not because they're posturing for hiring or followers.
• neilv 2y ago
  When criticizing a company or individual behavior on HN (not on LinkedIn), some guidelines/practices I've been evolving personally: * Don't talk about your current employer. Work within the company to solve any problems there. (If you can't solve problems there, get away ASAP. Work with a lawyer, if necessary. Still don't talk about it publicly while you're there.) * Don't name individuals. That's fraught with risks, including you being somehow wrong and doing harm, Internet mobs being dumb as snot, and all the shameless data-mining surveillance many companies are doing could mean outsized/inappropriate harm to someone. * Don't name a company if you've worked for them, or otherwise had non-public access to it. Who is going to trust you in the future if you don't show discretion. * Don't violate NDA. * Be sufficiently vague so that you can talk about generalizable learnings. Your goal is for other people to learn not to do X; your goal isn't to hurt the reputation of a person who once did X. To help anonymize the subjects, you talk about things you've "seen" (in an ambigious sense) at places you've worked, as well as with people you've talked with, companies you've studied, etc., without saying which it was. You can do this without saying anything untrue. This is harder to do with only a few years of experience, though. * Don't try to unmask anonymous/pseudonymous other people who share, nor unmask the identity of companies/people they're talking about. You could be wrong in your deductions, or you could just be disrepecting how they tried to share with discretion in good faith. Other guidelines/practices?
  • fluorinerocket 2y ago
    No, name and shame
    • neilv 2y ago
      Can you say rationale for disagreeing? (Since you posted that one-line response, at least 3 people have downvoted me, but no explanation other than your one-line disagreement without argument. So I'm not learning much, and maybe I wasted my time bothering to type out my current thinking.)
      • pessimizer 2y ago
        I think that what you typed makes a lot of sense. Maybe people downvoted it because it was so clearly presented that it triggered their internal LLM detector.
• blast 2y ago
  This feels like a PR hit for "the 34-year-old with more than 80,000 followers"
• johnea 2y ago
  So, Microsoft is the basis for a "new worker uprising"? That's... a pretty funny statement 8-) Just another example of people thinking a database entry on a corporate software platform is their "real life"...
• yodsanklai 2y ago
  If I had an issue within my company, I assume I'd talk to my representatives within the company, or seek assistance from a lawyer (I suppose most countries have labour courts). Sharing on LinkedIn may backfire. Depending on the issue, you may pass as a trouble maker that companies would rather avoid.
• mancerayder 2y ago
  LinkedIn is full of PR nonsense. It's hard to believe. It's a medium for expression; the intelligent way to express is to self-promote subtly, the unintelligent is to express your feelings. I've seen a number of people I used to work with, who are suddenly CTO's, or some C-level position, although I truly doubt it. Someone I used to work who can barely communicate in sentences and has a fairly heavy autism, and never managed anyone, is now listed as 'IT Director' on LinkedIn. I had to laugh. And let's not forget the recruiters, who are always described like this: "Getter-Doner-of-Things; Enterpreneur; Executive Headhunter; author; Thought Leader; and Father" Sorry, now it's me expressing my feelings.
  • stogot 2y ago
    There’s a lot of title inflation. I’ve seen several companies posting assistant jobs as “chief of staff” with low salaries
  • ninininino 2y ago
    IT director often means - person who manages adding and removing businesses at a small or medium sized business to various SAAS tools, purchasing additional licenses/seats, making sure that the company card is set to pay for said tools, configuring software, etc.
• codr7 2y ago
  It only takes one disagreement to see the true face of HR. They are special trained to tear unwanted employees into shreds. No surprise, really. They are employed by the same company you're disagreeing with.
• manosyja 2y ago
  > "HR is often more about protecting the company's interests than supporting employees," Costi says. "Reporting toxic behavior can backfire, labeling you as a 'troublemaker' and potentially putting your job at risk. The sad reality is that many toxic bosses are untouchable, insulated by the very system that's supposed to hold them accountable." This is exactly the reason tinnitus go to HR. Can confirm.
• znpy 2y ago
  Eh, same old story. HR is not your friend. HR is there to protect the company from you, not you from the company.
• ranger207 2y ago
  > Brenecki also notes why it might make sense to go to HR. If you're experiencing harassment, discrimination, or other bad behavior at work, the company likely prefers that you go to HR so it can handle the situation according to state employment laws. If you don't go to HR, the company could later be found legally liable for allowing discrimination or retaliation. At the point where you have to choose between going to HR and posting on LinkedIn, the company has already allowed discrimination or retaliation, and so should be punished for allowing that. If you go to HR, there's much less chance of the company being actually punished like they should be. You _want_ them to be held legally liable for allowing discrimination or retaliation
• golemiprague 2y ago
  [dead]
• 4ndrewl 2y ago
  HR is the employer's HR dept. As an employee your HR dept is your union.
• antod 2y ago
  In companies that aren't completely pathological, HR complaints often will eventually oust a toxic manager. But sadly the key word is 'eventually'. It will usually take sacrificing multiple employees and/or the leaving feedback of many others to build enough of a track record or evidence for them to finally take action. Complaining to HR probably won't help you, but it could be part of what eventually helps someone. Often not worth it compared to finding another job though.