site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

And if I’m the management who already dislikes HR maybe I fire them and out source a portion of their work.

And then hire who? The industry's biases are endemic. Even if you have a pragmatic and fair HR leader, it's insanely difficult to find non-racist/sexist HR professionals.

Then, government is its own animal. You need to both know and understand how it works, and be comfortable with being part of the grift machine. They're checking boxes. Affirmative action made things easier for them: You have two hires, they've all lied about their qualifications, and you don't have to think about work ethic or intelligence. You just say "Darkest Wins" and move on.

Sorry for the blackpill, but an EO changes far less than you would suggest. Maybe 10% improvement. This needs to be enshrined in law, and even then it can't be 100% effective.

With no one. I just don’t think HR is a valuable cost center.

With no one.

And then you get sued, and the EEOC going after you, until you're forced out of business. Like Jim says, HR departments are a tentacle of the state inserted into every corporation, via threat of lawfare.

Fire them for what? Affirmative Action doesn't give private companies license to ignore Title VII. Any "affirmative Action Hires" you can find are likely going to be marginal cases where the resume was similar to a qualified non-minority candidate. The upshot is that any AA on the part of your HR department isn't going to be consequential to the point where it's worth laying off the majority of your HR department so you can pay them unemployment on top of the increased rates you're going to be paying an outside contractor to do the work. Not to mention the fact that this outside contractor isn't going to be as familiar with your company and it's policies as your existing staff. My firm outsources its billing to a third party firm and my boss has hour-long weekly Zoom meetings with them just to make sure they're doing what we need them to do. And this is a relatively small firm. In any event, let's not pretend you're going to give some company in India major say in hiring decisions.

Fire them because the vast majority of their actions actually reduce value. I think most of HR is bullshit and the very limited value add could easily be outsourced. This is just a signal that lawsuits will be easier to defend and therefore reduces the CYA of HR.