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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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This is about layoffs in tech and what they underscore about modern economy.

https://blog.interviewing.io/how-much-have-2022-layoffs-affected-engineers-vs-other-departments-we-dug-into-the-data-to-find-out/

According to our data, almost half of HR people and recruiters got laid off, as compared to 10% of engineers and only 4% of salespeople.

This passage feels obvious. Of course companies will let go those employees first who contribute little to the bottom line. Of course companies will hold onto their critical resources--engineers and salespeople in this case--until the very worst moment.

But underneath this is a statement about how many bullshit jobs are there in our economy. Jobs that are merely simple busywork. Jobs that exist solely as a way to redistribute the fruits of capitalism from those who have found a way to way to produce for society and those who didn't. It's basically a giant social contract about providing for a rather large part of society that would not otherwise be able to sustain itself.

If anything, this speaks of how deep our humanism runs. Instead of sawing off the sickly branch, we embrace it with care, doing so in a way that doesn't over-infringe on the patient's dignity (Consider how powerful a mark of status it is to provide for the weak and poor--now this status-marker has been democratized).

Thus we learn something practical: don't take anything HR says or does too seriously. They play an unpopular, minor role in the fabric of a company, relegated to the equivalent of keeping the litter box clean: ensuring legal compliance, tackling on/off-boarding paperwork, and organizing company celebrations. That, and be wary of HR departments that seem to outgrow their function. A fat, active HR department is a sign that a company isn't allocating its funds efficiently. Or that it usurps power from more important departments, eg. the power to design and run the hiring process (they should only take care of the mechanical parts; the candidate qualification process should be in the hands of subject-matter experts). Either way, it's a bad sign.

Jobs that exist solely as a way to redistribute the fruits of capitalism from those who have found a way to way to produce for society and those who didn't.

While I'm not a fan of HR, this characterization is not correct. Why would companies keep HR employees on the payroll at any time if they weren't providing value? What's happening now is companies are expecting not to hire much in the next ~year so they're cutting employees that help hire people -- HR and recruiters.

I suppose if you take a wider view, the HR roles are a way for society to feed people who aren't producing anything, and companies are coerced into participating in the farce by employment laws that require compliance. It's similar to police: they don't produce anything; they're just there to ensure compliance. The difference is that police stop crimes that are actually harmful, while HR stops implicit witchery.

While I'm not a fan of HR, this characterization is not correct. Why would companies keep HR employees on the payroll at any time if they weren't providing value?

There are many theories of this, but labor hoarding is quite well established empirically. Cultural influences seem non-trivial - managers just don't like firing people. I once replaced someone with about 20 lines of code and kept them around doing the same job (producing a spreadsheet that was formerly read by a cron job, but is now read by no one) until I found an internal transfer for them.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/real-dev.stlouisfed.org/wp/2005/2005-040.pdf

https://www.nber.org/papers/w3556

https://pure.eur.nl/en/publications/cultural-influences-on-employee-termination-decisions-firing-the-

Why would companies keep HR employees on the payroll at any time if they weren't providing value?

To cover employer asses from potential legal liability created out of thin air by the State.

One could even say that this is the only reason. Think about it, what is it that HR does that doesn't ultimately stem from some legal obligation? Even fucking conflict resolution could just be handled by private society but has to be there because otherwise you get sued for "fostering a hostile work environment".

It's made up sinecures all the way down.

It's made up sinecures all the way down.

This article takes this thesis and tries to talk about the gender dynamics behind it:

One would expect office politics to intensify when good jobs are scarce. But where some respond to scarcity by fighting harder for existing resources, others may seek to deepen the pool. Here a look at the cradle of elite (over)production suggests something intriguing is afoot.

“Administrative bloat” has been a remarked on feature of higher education for some time. According to one 2014 study, the number of faculty and teaching staff per administrator fell roughly 40 per cent at most US colleges and universities between 1990 and 2012, and now stands at around 2.5 faculty members per administrator.

Less remarked on is the sex breakdown of the growing proportion of administrators. A recent diversity and inclusion report by the University of California indicates that women make up more than 70 per cent of non academic staff across (among others) nursing, therapeutic services, health, health technicians, communications services roles, and a majority or near majority across all non manual staff roles. In other words, if men are still over represented in top academic roles, the non academic supporting ecosystem is overwhelmingly female.

In practice, then, as pursued within universities, one byproduct of student activism is something akin to a “jobs for the girls” scheme, in which a heavily female student body drives demand for more roles across feminised non-academic administrative roles, which in turn helps create an environment geared toward women, and so on. Or, as 2019’s “Afghanistan Papers” famously described that military campaign, a “self licking ice cream cone”.

Young alumnae graduating from this ecosystem might be expected to carry its insights out into professional life. And indeed, according to America’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, HR (a career whose employees are 71 per cent female, according to one industry report) is one of the fastest growing occupations in the country.

70.3% of all human resources managers are women, while 29.7% are men.

https://www.zippia.com/human-resources-manager-jobs/demographics/

I imagine it's harder to get this kind of scheme to work in private industry, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be at least a minor component. In my own experience, most HR folks I've talked to were women who were also heavily into a certain flavor of politics. I wouldn't put it above them to invent work, then use that to argue for increasing headcount and hiring more comradettes. But I don't think this is a large force. More like upper single digits of % perhaps?

I wouldn't put it above them to invent work, then use that to argue for increasing headcount and hiring more comradettes. But I don't think this is a large force. More like upper single digits of % perhaps?

More like near-triple digits. Arguing for increasing one's subordinates is a standard managment behavior, as documented in the classic "Parkinson's Law or the Pursuit of Progress"

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