7 ms·

The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission. It's the role that's broken, note the teams.

by antirez 13y ago

Xylakant 13y ago
As with all departments in a company, HR does the tasks that they're assigned to do. It's a task, not a mission. There's scope creep and mission creep as with every task we're used to. If they do stuff that they're not supposed to do and make decisions that they're not supposed to make, it's the team and the person handling the team that's broken and time to reevaluate and adjust what value the team is supposed to bring to the company. That however is not unique to HR but applies to all roles and teams in a company. I worked with great HR people and less than stellar. But I also had to constantly battle system administration that made technical decisions for developers (no, we can't deploy this because ..., you must code your projects in ...) and stellar OPS teams that worked with the dev teams to provide an insane amount of knowledge, experience, insight and help. It's easy to bash HR people just as "regular" employees often bash IT ("They won't provide that simple feature that I've been asking for ever since, just because they hate me."). But calling the role "broken" does not magically make it disappear. Someone needs to handle the employer/employee relationship and all attached nuisances - any organisation with employees that does not handle this role is more broken than any HR department I've ever seen. I'd really hope that we'd be over this and appreciate that other people in our organisation provide value and experience that we maybe can't see at fist glance. Instead we close our eyes and call their role "broken".
- einhverfr 13y ago
  What, specifically is that task?
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    The task for an HR person? The scope really depends on your organisations needs and on the quality and qualifications of your HR person. In general: Handle or at least support all tasks that are associated with employees and other people in your company. The scope can be as narrow as "do background checks on hires, do the math on their desired pay and tell me how much each one would cost and if there's any red flags" or as broad as "do a first phone call and check out if you think that person is a good fit culturally." Handle all associated paperwork, set up interview dates, handle travel and accommodation arrangements for the prospective hire, ... Handle all paperwork associated with employees, sick leave, keep track of holidays, ... Follow changes in applicable law. Organise team building events. I know of an HR department that organises monthly lunches where people of the company get randomly assigned to groups so that they get to know other people working in the same company, not only their team peers. There's a lot of things you can do as HR person. Not everybody needs everything and not every HR person may have the required qualifications for each task, so you probably just have to figure out what exact set of responsibilities right for your place.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      Given your previous comments about mission creep, would you agree with me that the narrower the role the better? Out of curiosity, could you imagine an organization functioning where HR work was done by administrative assistants to team managers?
      - Xylakant 13y ago
        > Given your previous comments about mission creep, would you agree with me that the narrower the role the better? No. Mission creep happens on broad and narrow roles the same. The better defined the role, the better. Constant reevaluation and adaption to changed realities is a must. > Out of curiosity, could you imagine an organization functioning where HR work was done by administrative assistants to team managers? Up to a certain degree yes, but there's the question how and where to allocate common functions if you have any. Depends on your organisation. That doesn't make the "HR department" disappear though, it just changes its name to "administrative assistants". It certainly makes things harder when people try to reach the HR department because that's what they're used to. All in all: If that fits your organisation, sure. Just make sure that the role is defined and someone is responsible and actually takes up the work. edit: see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289282 for a point where a more centralised HR made a positive impact. An assistant to the team manager might easily have missed the broad picture because of a more narrow view, focused on the teams turnover rate.
  - tetha 13y ago
    Our recruiters learn about the field they are recruiting in and search and evaluate potential candidates. Our HR admins manage and monitor sickness days, vacation days, contract renewals, contract terminations and so on. The HR managers, well, manage the rest of the HR.
    - Xylakant 13y ago
      Personal anecdote: One of the first companies I worked to as CTO lost me because they didn't have an HR person. The person in charge let the contract renewal negotiations slip from scheduled meeting to scheduled meeting for more than 6 month and by the time the actual meeting took place all I could say was "Sorry, I just signed somewhere else." That was the shortest contract negotiation I ever had.
      - drdeadringer 13y ago
        Question: Did you not bring this up yourself, to the person in charge? ... or were you possibly not so interested in continuing to work there, or maybe feeling that bringing it up was the sole responsibility of the person in charge?
        Xylakant 13y ago
        I initially brought the issue up. I was unhappy with the way some things were organised and (not) part of my sphere of influence plus a set of other open issues. The initial thrust was to renegotiate, to set responsibilities and expectations straight. We had an initial round of meetings and then the issue slipped with meetings getting pushed out further and further from the other side. So yes, I think that in this position the other person was in charge. In any case, even if I'd be responsible to push the agenda, a good HR department should not let an open (and known) issue slip. Quite, to the contrary, good HR should recognise situations like this before the employee ever feels the need to push for a contract renegotiation.
      - crucini 13y ago
        I'm not sure what you're arrangement was, but when I was contracting through an agency, HR was not involved. And contract expirations were a constant worry. It can take months to get the ball rolling for a contract renewal.
  - chiph 13y ago
    Their job is to protect the company from the risk that employees represent. If you get a moment, read "Corporate Confidential" by Cynthia Shapiro. Only 200 or so pages, and it's a quick read. But very enlightening.
    - crucini 13y ago
      Great book, but it will make you a bit paranoid about what you say/do at work. It did help me understand what HR is really doing.
      - chiph 13y ago
        I hope I never end up working at a firm where those situations are the norm. As they say, knowing is half the battle.
Drakim 13y ago
It's not even really their fault. The HR person wouldn't know about databases and the deep knowledge and great insight a candidate might possess. What the HR person would know is how the person appears socially and how he manages to present himself. The company should make sure the HR person isn't the only one deciding if somebody gets hired or not, because the HR person simply does not possess the tools needed to get the best man for the job by himself.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  I could see a possible role for HR. I don't think it remotely resembles what they are usually there to do. True story: I got an ad for a consulting position for "Postgre" The description had as a listed skill: "PostgreSQL USE GOOGLE TO VERIFY SPELLING" That's a bad sign there.
  - matwood 13y ago
    Or a recent job posting I saw for a Java tech lead: Required: Java Open source technologies Microsoft Visual Studio
    - felixr 13y ago
      This reminds me of a job posting I found around 2004, which had as requirement "at least 5 years of experience with C#"
      - josso 13y ago
        Or job postings in 2009 which required at least 3 years of experience with iOS development.
        krisoft 13y ago
        Not that impossible. Maybe they were trying to poach Apple employees. :)
RougeFemme 13y ago
I think it depends on the organization. I have never worked anywhere where the HR team had such a large role in hiring - that was not part of their mission. They freely acknowledge they were not qualified to do that. In all of my experience - at mid - large- size companies, the HR people did very high-level phone and resume screenings, if that. After that, it was up to the hiring manager and team. I've also heard of those "personality" tests being used as tie-breakers. But never to reject an otherwise highly qualifed - and preferred - candidate.
alan_cx 13y ago
Ah, so who hired the bad HR staff then? The founders? The programmers? The investors? Who put them there, apparently unqualified and unspecified?
dragonwriter 13y ago
> The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission. That's only true if the people defining the mission of various departments -- i.e., executive management -- is not competent at their job. Reforming or eliminating HR will not fix that problem.

The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission. It's the role that's broken, note the teams.

by antirez 13y ago

The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission. It's the role that's broken, note the teams.

Xylakant 13y ago

As with all departments in a company, HR does the tasks that they're assigned to do. It's a task, not a mission. There's scope creep and mission creep as with every task we're used to. If they do stuff that they're not supposed to do and make decisions that they're not supposed to make, it's the team and the person handling the team that's broken and time to reevaluate and adjust what value the team is supposed to bring to the company. That however is not unique to HR but applies to all roles and teams in a company. I worked with great HR people and less than stellar. But I also had to constantly battle system administration that made technical decisions for developers (no, we can't deploy this because ..., you must code your projects in ...) and stellar OPS teams that worked with the dev teams to provide an insane amount of knowledge, experience, insight and help. It's easy to bash HR people just as "regular" employees often bash IT ("They won't provide that simple feature that I've been asking for ever since, just because they hate me."). But calling the role "broken" does not magically make it disappear. Someone needs to handle the employer/employee relationship and all attached nuisances - any organisation with employees that does not handle this role is more broken than any HR department I've ever seen. I'd really hope that we'd be over this and appreciate that other people in our organisation provide value and experience that we maybe can't see at fist glance. Instead we close our eyes and call their role "broken".

einhverfr 13y ago
What, specifically is that task?
- Xylakant 13y ago
  The task for an HR person? The scope really depends on your organisations needs and on the quality and qualifications of your HR person. In general: Handle or at least support all tasks that are associated with employees and other people in your company. The scope can be as narrow as "do background checks on hires, do the math on their desired pay and tell me how much each one would cost and if there's any red flags" or as broad as "do a first phone call and check out if you think that person is a good fit culturally." Handle all associated paperwork, set up interview dates, handle travel and accommodation arrangements for the prospective hire, ... Handle all paperwork associated with employees, sick leave, keep track of holidays, ... Follow changes in applicable law. Organise team building events. I know of an HR department that organises monthly lunches where people of the company get randomly assigned to groups so that they get to know other people working in the same company, not only their team peers. There's a lot of things you can do as HR person. Not everybody needs everything and not every HR person may have the required qualifications for each task, so you probably just have to figure out what exact set of responsibilities right for your place.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Given your previous comments about mission creep, would you agree with me that the narrower the role the better? Out of curiosity, could you imagine an organization functioning where HR work was done by administrative assistants to team managers?
    - Xylakant 13y ago
      > Given your previous comments about mission creep, would you agree with me that the narrower the role the better? No. Mission creep happens on broad and narrow roles the same. The better defined the role, the better. Constant reevaluation and adaption to changed realities is a must. > Out of curiosity, could you imagine an organization functioning where HR work was done by administrative assistants to team managers? Up to a certain degree yes, but there's the question how and where to allocate common functions if you have any. Depends on your organisation. That doesn't make the "HR department" disappear though, it just changes its name to "administrative assistants". It certainly makes things harder when people try to reach the HR department because that's what they're used to. All in all: If that fits your organisation, sure. Just make sure that the role is defined and someone is responsible and actually takes up the work. edit: see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289282 for a point where a more centralised HR made a positive impact. An assistant to the team manager might easily have missed the broad picture because of a more narrow view, focused on the teams turnover rate.
- tetha 13y ago
  Our recruiters learn about the field they are recruiting in and search and evaluate potential candidates. Our HR admins manage and monitor sickness days, vacation days, contract renewals, contract terminations and so on. The HR managers, well, manage the rest of the HR.
  - Xylakant 13y ago
    Personal anecdote: One of the first companies I worked to as CTO lost me because they didn't have an HR person. The person in charge let the contract renewal negotiations slip from scheduled meeting to scheduled meeting for more than 6 month and by the time the actual meeting took place all I could say was "Sorry, I just signed somewhere else." That was the shortest contract negotiation I ever had.
    - drdeadringer 13y ago
      Question: Did you not bring this up yourself, to the person in charge? ... or were you possibly not so interested in continuing to work there, or maybe feeling that bringing it up was the sole responsibility of the person in charge?
      - Xylakant 13y ago
        I initially brought the issue up. I was unhappy with the way some things were organised and (not) part of my sphere of influence plus a set of other open issues. The initial thrust was to renegotiate, to set responsibilities and expectations straight. We had an initial round of meetings and then the issue slipped with meetings getting pushed out further and further from the other side. So yes, I think that in this position the other person was in charge. In any case, even if I'd be responsible to push the agenda, a good HR department should not let an open (and known) issue slip. Quite, to the contrary, good HR should recognise situations like this before the employee ever feels the need to push for a contract renegotiation.
    - crucini 13y ago
      I'm not sure what you're arrangement was, but when I was contracting through an agency, HR was not involved. And contract expirations were a constant worry. It can take months to get the ball rolling for a contract renewal.
- chiph 13y ago
  Their job is to protect the company from the risk that employees represent. If you get a moment, read "Corporate Confidential" by Cynthia Shapiro. Only 200 or so pages, and it's a quick read. But very enlightening.
  - crucini 13y ago
    Great book, but it will make you a bit paranoid about what you say/do at work. It did help me understand what HR is really doing.
    - chiph 13y ago
      I hope I never end up working at a firm where those situations are the norm. As they say, knowing is half the battle.

Drakim 13y ago

It's not even really their fault. The HR person wouldn't know about databases and the deep knowledge and great insight a candidate might possess. What the HR person would know is how the person appears socially and how he manages to present himself. The company should make sure the HR person isn't the only one deciding if somebody gets hired or not, because the HR person simply does not possess the tools needed to get the best man for the job by himself.

einhverfr 13y ago
I could see a possible role for HR. I don't think it remotely resembles what they are usually there to do. True story: I got an ad for a consulting position for "Postgre" The description had as a listed skill: "PostgreSQL USE GOOGLE TO VERIFY SPELLING" That's a bad sign there.
- matwood 13y ago
  Or a recent job posting I saw for a Java tech lead: Required: Java Open source technologies Microsoft Visual Studio
  - felixr 13y ago
    This reminds me of a job posting I found around 2004, which had as requirement "at least 5 years of experience with C#"
    - josso 13y ago
      Or job postings in 2009 which required at least 3 years of experience with iOS development.
      - krisoft 13y ago
        Not that impossible. Maybe they were trying to poach Apple employees. :)

RougeFemme 13y ago

I think it depends on the organization. I have never worked anywhere where the HR team had such a large role in hiring - that was not part of their mission. They freely acknowledge they were not qualified to do that. In all of my experience - at mid - large- size companies, the HR people did very high-level phone and resume screenings, if that. After that, it was up to the hiring manager and team. I've also heard of those "personality" tests being used as tie-breakers. But never to reject an otherwise highly qualifed - and preferred - candidate.

alan_cx 13y ago

Ah, so who hired the bad HR staff then? The founders? The programmers? The investors? Who put them there, apparently unqualified and unspecified?

dragonwriter 13y ago

> The problem with HR is that they do tasks they are not qualified to as a mission. That's only true if the people defining the mission of various departments -- i.e., executive management -- is not competent at their job. Reforming or eliminating HR will not fix that problem.