Living the Dream...

Just saw this article while browsing the news, and I do have to say:

It's the feel-good story of the day.

There is a God.

Good things really do happen.

A few years ago, HR was one of the many hats I was wearing at the company, along with most functions other than product/engineering. For a growing company, was just too much. I asked our CEO to consider hiring someone who had a dedicated background in those respective functions to take over. Which, to his credit, he did. Biggest single mistake I ever made, assuming that a dedicated, experienced HR lead (and the clown car team that ended up being hired) would solve any problems. Nope. Instead, the dysfunction, chaos. And gross overspending from this team that ensued haunted the company for years.

To be fair, quality HR people do exist. Many people mean well, and certainly don't intend to do harm to an organization. Ownership and responsibility are so key. I fear that we've trained our professional HR teams to do the exact opposite: reduce risk, censor points of potential liability, and bury each other in mandatory trainings and legalese. On paper, everything can appear legit, and still deal a death blow to the company. I now realize why so few people trust their HR orgs --- and by extension, their employers.

It's probably one of the key hard lessons about work life that I've had to learn. I'd say that's what makes reading this news headline so oddly cathartic.

Where Have All the Sane People Gone?

One of the things about emerging from the bubble of childhood is that with the loss of the local superstructure of authority, so much more responsibility is now placed on each individual. As adults, we have so much agency to thrive, as well as (frankly) to go the opposite way. For me as a new adult circa half a lifetime ago, that newfound sense of independence was thrilling. Perhaps encouraged by the fact that I was an only child and who grew up largely without the presence of my parents at most hours of the day, I relished being able to finally and officially plan and act by myself. Getting a driver's license, a credit card, a job, a life. It was great. It was naïve of me, however, to assume that the great "unshackling" granted by adulthood was universally positive. (Trigger warning on following content)

On the In-N-Out Heiress Being the Bigger Person

Knowing that I'm a sucker for any news about In-N-Out Burger, mostly coverage on when locations around Portland are finally going to open, Google News offered me an article that hit me from a different direction: [Fortune] Heiress Lynsi Snyder became President of In-N-Out aged 27. She’s been betrayed by colleagues but refuses to have ’emotional distance’ with her team

The clickbait portion of the article obviously emanates from the word betrayed. That's what caught my eye. After all, scandal remains the most effective dog whistle for readers of "journalism". And the why? Like many others, I've been betrayed at the workplace — it's still pretty fresh for me.