What topics appeal to you in this category?

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Harper J. Dimmerman

Why is corporate culture the way it is?

Obviously a pretty broad question, but does anybody else see a disjunct here? "How to Find a Job" books always reassure their readers that while the current economy presupposes a lack of loyalty, that works both ways -- your employer can fire you whenever but hey, you can leave whenever, too.

In practice, though, that's not the case. In practice, it's in the employer's interest to promote a faux-loyalty and a real conformity, even when it's obvious that they feel no such emotions in the other direction..

I find HR people, with their often-times mealy-mouthed platitudes and rigid thinking (usually derived from badly-digested psychology and, I suspect, legal realities) are the absolute worst. Often times getting a job involves cutting through the cotton wool of the HR department and discovering what the reality really is. Does anyone here work for an HR department? What on earth do you have to say for yourself?

Obviously I feel very alienated from the contemporary job world. I think I could handle the current Dickens-like realities if employers were up front about it -- "yeah, we're just interested in ourselves and we're going to work you to death until such time as we no longer need you". At least that would be honest. I can't stand the hypocrisies, though.

Yet another rambling post, I'm afraid.

tmcgee

If someone is in HR, please comment upon whether or not it's possible to remain neutral and detached?

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Harper J. Dimmerman

I'm not in HR, but anyone in a corporate setting knows that decisions that are made are decisions that are best for the company. Period.

The same is true for non-corporate (or entrepreneurial) situations, as well. I know when I run my business, I gauge what events to go to that will help me meet hte right people to either build my business or extend my personal network productively.

I don't think that the size of a company changes the function of it - you still do what's best for it in the end.

Thoughts?

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This is only true if you broaden the meaning of "best for the company" to the point where it becomes meaningless.

Look. There are plenty of people who can do whatever job is needed, right? Therefore what seperates qualified person X from qualified person Y? Usually it comes down to intangibles. Did the interviewer like him? Does she think he'll fit into "the corporate culture", which really waters down to "will he get excited about pizza Friday?" Etc. All of these can be subsequently justified as "decisions that are best for the company", but that's just after-the-fact rationalizations.

It's arguable that HR is in any position to even judge this, incidentally. I could go on a big rant about HR: let's just say that "how to get a job" books encourage dodging HR for a reason.

I could better live with this reality if everyone wasn't so mealy-mouthed and evasive about it. Better to say "I didn't hire you because I wanted a schlub I could bully around" or "I didn't hire you because I don't know you and that tie is awful" or "I didn't hire you because I promised my girlfriend I'd hire her best friend".

Well, MY thought is that you've been reading too many entrepreneurial books at Barnes and Noble. Perhaps, as an aspiring writer, I'm overly sensitive to words, but "extend my personal network productively" -- bleech. That has almost no meaning in itself. You probably mean something like "advertise my services"/"find new customers"/ "not waste time doing both", I know, but better to say it straight up, I think.

Not beating up on you particularly, that's just a good example of the kind of thing I feel alienated from in corporate culture.

tmcgee

There are very different ways of calculating this, however. Some companies look at employees as the asset, which needs to be cared for and developed in order to make it more productive, and whose elimination needs to be very carefully justified. Others look at salaries as a liability, to be eliminated wherever possible. Many fall in between.

In the late nineties, when talent was more scarce, many companies with a predilection for the latter view were forced to at least give lip service to the former view in order to fill the seats, and have now reverted to the latter view.

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Thomas Taylor

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