Is it your experience that most tech companies have absent, dysfunctional, or toothless HR departments?
Posted by Zealousideal-War2807@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 17 comments
Sometimes I talk about my work experiences with people who work in other industries and they’re totally aghast at what people in tech tend to do regularly. It’s very “Lord of the Flies” a lot of the time. Your coworker acts like an asshole or harasses you, you have to document it in case they won’t stop, but a lot of the time in tech companies, reporting it seems to make your life worse. Your manager does almost nothing and is passive about anything that doesn’t affect him.
Just seems like there’s no accountability but a lot of engineers like it that way? It’s normally to act cruelly or carelessly but if you have no experience outside of the tech industry or no perspective outside of it, it genuinely seems normal, while seeming insane and narcissistic to anyone outside of it? 1 asshole can make your life hell even if it’s just 1 asshole in a 2000 person company and I get the sense we do “develop a thick skin” instead of fighting back.
That’s what my manager always used to say about my team lead being….questionable and making everyone else uncomfortable. And of course you have to report it but then you see how many people they work together to get fired.
No_Patience6395@reddit
I think you may have an overly positive perception of other industries, and misunderstand the purpose of HR.
HR are there to protect the company and do the bidding of management, who are the main perpetrators of bullying and harassment. They are also responsible for enforcing the culture and informal hierarchy, and the vast majority of bullying and harassment is punching down the informal hierarchy, and punishing non conformity. Their job is to support the perp and punish the victim, and to perpetrate themselves if necessary. Though its possible that you're reversing victim and offender and actually complaining about them not being harsh or swift enough when punishing the victim, I'm choosing to allow for the possibility that you're not. It's not like this is secret, there's no shortage of materials targeted at perps doing the reverse recommending going to HR.
When I attended group therapy with multiple therapists taking the group, I was shocked by how the senior one treated the others. An electrician I spoke to had also dealt with some of the problems I had with one of my managers. When I've worked in tech companies within domains that have their own industry, and I had colleagues with a background in that industry, people who had worked in that industry could recognise the the toxicity I dealt with. The most overtly biased team I worked on was full of ex defense people and defense contractors. Medicine is notorious for lots of bullying. Obviously there's variation in the degree, but it's not like other industries are wonderful havens of support.
Zealousideal-War2807@reddit (OP)
That’s also true. Bullying can take different forms depending on the industry
am_nk@reddit
HR in enterprise is not to protect you. It is there to protect the company from your wrongdoing.
ortica52@reddit
This is true, _but_ it’s also there to protect the company against other employees’ wrongdoing, especially your manager, which means that their interests and your interests are sometimes aligned (if those people are doing potentially illegal things that negatively impact you).
I think what OP was talking about is more when they aren’t actually protecting the company against the wrongdoing very effectively.
raralala1@reddit
Ok how many times we have to said this, this is repeated SO MANY TIMES, I refuse to believe someone on reddit for a year never saw this written.
Zealousideal-War2807@reddit (OP)
Can’t that also apply to a company’s reputation? I cannot tell if HR also participates in that or if that’s just management.
Plus_Fill_5015@reddit
100
ortica52@reddit
I think this is definitely the case at a lot of tech companies. I have managed to avoid this kind of toxic culture for most of my career by asking lots of questions during interviews and turning down companies with red flags (but that has probably reduced my earning potential).
sfscsdsf@reddit
how do you know they aren’t lying to get you in though?
ortica52@reddit
In the current market, it may not be possible, but when I get an offer, I always insist to talk to a peer engineer (has to be not super senior level). Part of the “test” is whether it seems like the engineer is giving real/honest answers or just parroting what they think they are supposed to say (also junior/mid-level engineers are, frankly, not often all that good at perfect polished lies so it’s just easier to see and figure out what’s really going on).
One question I like to ask is about biggest challenges facing the team, and I ask that of everyone I talk to (except recruiter). If they answer only very technical stuff, I’ll often follow up asking about team dynamic or process challenges. The answers don’t need to be the same of course, but they should be different perspectives on a similar problem, rather than completely different/from left field compared to each other. This is a good sign that communication is healthy and working, the manager actually listens to people on the team, etc.
If I am not sure sure, I ask to talk to someone else, normally with a different background request (do you have any women on the team I could talk to? Junior/senior engineer, frontend, whatever). Just how they respond to a request like this says a lot, plus of course you get more context from the new person.
U_L_Uus@reddit
Aye, had one such.case recently. All was good until I ran my usefulness and then they kicked me out after a meeting worthy of synanon. Wankers
almarcTheSun@reddit
Why would HR be "toothy"? It exists solely as a complaint dumpster to make workers share their grievances with upper management so that they can decide to harass/sue/fire you to avoid liability. One's gotta be supremely stupid to speak to HR on any issues related to upper management.
gollyned@reddit
A year ago I left benign technical comments on another engineer’s docs. I questioned the reasoning behind a technology choice.
Their manager threw a fit and explicitly threatened to damage my career, and has been doing it for a year now.
They’re immediately next to my team. We need to integrate and cooperate. They simply ignore me, claim they have no bandwidth even to review brief documents, and generally have nothing to do with me. Every interaction with me ends up being funneled back to be in terms of disguised feedback through our mutual manager, a director.
I went to HR. She seemed frustrated I was even talking to her about this, even though her calendar was almost completely empty.
scandii@reddit
it is people all the way down dude. your promotions hinges on how well people like you, and your beef and the outcome unsurprisingly also hinges on how well people like you.
heck, the leadership of entire nations essentially boils down to a popularity contest called "voting".
all in all, most of these processes are just for show - nothing fundamentally stops every layer of working being people skills and politics.
Zealousideal-War2807@reddit (OP)
That is true.
Pleasant-Aardvark258@reddit
As someone who started out in science and academia first. Don’t think this is just a tech issue, it’s just the standard. HR are really only about protecting the company, anything else is a pleasant surprise.
I would say that both science and tech have the similar spectrum of highly intelligent but socially lacking personalities which makes it so much worse.
Economy-Sign-5688@reddit
Yes. It’s the industry standard.