Then we have HR: Who basically grew from a few people you met when you were employed, and when you left the company, to a company within the company, and something that now totally dominates company culture with mandatory “sensitivity” training courses and DEI directives etc., that while professing to do good, actually only hampers productivity.
My problem with HR is not DEI or whatever. It's that somehow HR went from the small group of people that helped management get what was needed and make sure stuff was done right (procedurally and legally), and dealt with personnel issues, to somehow asserting for themselves absolute and unaccountable discretion over all personnel decisions.
Any and every decision not specifically delegated solely to a supervisor (essentially, approving timecards and routine time off, and shift scheduling) required HR approval. And even if every process was followed exactly, every form filled out completely and properly, every single detail taken care of in the correct order, a business case clearly and obviously presented, and every approval was obtained from every level of management up to Senior VP--anyone at any level of HR can simply say "denied", with no justification, no transparency, no appeal, no recourse, no alternative. That's how they fucked me last year.
Every decision I made as an engineer had to be backed up data and/or sound reasoning; whenever I made a decision that seemed to go against what was expected or seemed obvious, I was usually asked to provide that justification and be prepared to defend myself. HR had no such requirement; "because we said so" was the beginning and end of everything.
You didn't even know who actually made the decision. Unlike any other department, the entire HR org chart was hidden from the general employee population. You knew who your assigned representative was; beyond that it was a complete state secret. Similarly, their processes, rules, SOPs, etc. were hidden. It got so bad that HR would not even respond directly to emails or direct messages--they insisted only on phone or in-person communication (and would not leave voicemail), a practice which can only be assumed to ensure no paper trail was left that could be used against them. Not that it mattered; most inquiries simply led to long trains of word salad that said absolutely nothing of substance.
And even if you did somehow pry out of them a statement in writing, and follow everything they tell you to the letter, it apparently becomes null and void as soon as you read it, and "yes, we agreed last week that was acceptable, but now we need additional time to evaluate" or simply "haha j/k no" was how the game was played.
I can tell you exactly when it all started, too. A new CEO took over, and within a couple years a big layoff hit. After gutting much of engineering and other indirect staff over a couple days, all the HR folks who had to handle those terminations were themselves sacked on Friday. A series of punitive, counterproductive, and
deeply unpopular policy changes were enacted immediately after, and then over the next year or two, lots of new HR people were brought in. The new primary focus became "enforcement of Policy no matter how detrimental it is" and the primary qualification for working in HR was unquestioning obedience to said CEO's decisions. HR basically became the CEO's
Cheka that was absolutely above the law and unaccountable to anyone but him.
they become more and more specialized in minutia
I think there are two causes of this. One is the aerospace tendency at every level to focus on maximum performance--we want the lightest, most efficient, best-performing ______ and (as long as the money lasts) we will ruthlessly optimize the design to get that perfect part, then try to figure out how to make it. This generally results in complex high-cost manufacturing processes and bespoke components (valves, actuators, LRUs, etc) at almost every level. Then we try to squeeze cost out of production after the fact.
The other side is cost-plus contracts, which I have come to absolutely despise after just a few months working in defense. The administrative and paperwork-generating requirements easily suck up 30-50% or more of your average engineer's time, and also brings in a huge extra army of paper-pushers (read: overhead cost) whose sole job it is to track everything and make sure the government isn't spending extra money. Add on top the three extra levels of approval that everything requires. Of course, since the contract is billed by hours worked, and every employee adds hours to which that percentage fee applies...
I used to say I wish I'd listened to Mom and gone into civil engineering. The last 10 months have convinced me that what I should have actually done was be a plumber like my great grandfather and great uncle. You can find employment everywhere, it's clean honest money, and you won't wind up sitting at a desk in a windowless building staring at a computer screen doing pricing analysis and organizing meetings to plan your plan for providing the proposal that is your deliverable for the first phase of the the study wherein you plan to propose a project to create a proposal for the customer so you can then do a project to make more deliverables for them to implement.
I moved because I had to for my family to have access to medical care, but in the process I think I committed career suicide.
