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Comment by jfk13 | Hacker News Reader

Seems like every time HR comes up here, someone says this stuff. It's really tiresome.

I get that there are doubtless places where this is essentially true -- particularly, perhaps, in the US scene, given the overall culture there -- but I do not believe it to be a universal truth.

If your experience of life and work has led you to believe this of every company and every HR department... well, I'm sorry for you. And if it's more a case of wanting to appear smart and edgy by making this claim, well, I'm sorry for you too. It must be sad to live such a cynical life.

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I agree with you as I've never seen this side of HR and I've worked at various companies in the US (including Amazon, which was by far my best employer).

The tide in the US seems to be normal people vs business with this idea that all businesses are out to take advantage of employees and I just don't feel that's true in a general sense.

Granted, I'm a highly skilled software engineer making great money and with seemingly limitless opportunities in the current market so saying I have privilege is an understatement.

HR is the subunit of the firm dedicated to minimizing risk and maximizing efficiency across the firm (and thus, independently of the specific business function of other units) in the extraction of surplus value from workers.

Their function within capitalist industry is directly, fundamentally, and uniquely concerned with the manner in which capitalist industry itself is hostile to workers.

A firm in which HR is not generally hostile to the interests of workers is fundamentally maladapted to competition in a capitalist economy and is, ceteris paribus, likely to either fail in the face of competition without this defect or be forced to rectify the defect.

> HR is the subunit of the firm dedicated to minimizing risk and maximizing efficiency across the firm (and thus, independently of the specific business function of other units) in the extraction of surplus value from workers.

And the best, and certainly the cheapest, way to achieve that is by having happy employees in a healthy work environment. So in my experience, that's what HR tries to achieve.

I'm sorry your experience was different.

> And the best, and certainly the cheapest, way to achieve that is by having happy employees in a healthy work environment.

I think that's way too broad and general of a statement. It really depends on the nature of the industry, the competitive landscape, and many other things. In non-essential software, where the hands-on technical employees have tremendous influence over the direction of the firm, that may be true. In extractive industries and possibly even industrial ones it may be cheaper to externalize as many costs as possible, invest the bare minimum legally required in safety equipment and training, etc.

Why did it take strikes, literal shooting battles, legislative action, and generally tremendous amounts of effort to enact basic workers rights in this country if it would have been cheaper to just ... give people a happy and healthy working environment?

And why do people insist on assuming that the behavior of the worst companies is the standard that all companies necessarily follow?

> And the best, and certainly the cheapest, way to achieve that is by having happy employees in a healthy work environment.

It's generally not the cheapest, and often not even possible where there is a deep conflict between preferences of employees and/or between the fundamental market realities of the line of business and ideals of “healthy work environment“.

It's true that “cattle not pets” isn't the line you give to the cattle, who really want to believe that they are “valued members of the corporate family“.

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