Your IT Company's Biggest Enemy

http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/02/your_it_companys_biggest_enemy.html

by rams • 17 years ago

9 7 17 years ago

russell• 17 years ago

"... is the HR department."

Among the many reasons that I avoid corporate IT. Some of the smell tests are nattering on and on about responsibilities like attending meetings, preparing reports. It's like telling a doctor to scrub before surgery.

jhancock• 17 years ago

yep, a key reason I avoid BigCorp as well. But your comparison may be off: I have read recently (I think from HN) that forcing doctors and nurses to scrub before surgery reduces disease. I know, we all like to think the docs will do this with no oversight, but apparently not.

tome• 17 years ago

Indeed they don't, and this was featured on YC:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=760477

GeoffWozniak• 17 years ago

3. I only computed two years of a university degree in computer science.

I suggest you get some more hardware, perhaps you can compute the remaining two a little quicker.

gamble• 17 years ago

Comma splice.

sharpn• 17 years ago

It's not difficult to avoid the 'HR gateway' problem - just have HR concentrate on payroll, legal compliance issues, visas etc. & not interview or filter resumes. Interviewer should be the prospective recruit's direct manager, &/or someone who has/is or can do the job in question (wherever possible) and a seperate interview by someone else to confirm the first opinion. Is that rare? I've never hired any other way.

kallistec• 17 years ago

This reminds me of that YC funded recruiting company (forgot the name--help!) that closed up shop and had their postmortem featured on HN recently. The conclusion was that HR departments aren't a profit center, so there's no motivation to innovate.

Maybe there should be a RFS for a better way to measure HR performance; that way, at least the pointy-haired bosses could be yelled at by their pointy-haired bosses when they score below industry average, or worse than last year.

Your IT Company's Biggest Enemy

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