HR is a useless joke. Just admit it.

“It’s your beat, Ted.”

Years ago, maybe a month or so after I got divorced, I met this dude for happy hour. He worked as a consultant in “HR Tech,” which is a fancy way of saying platforms that do screening and recruiting and background checks and payroll. On about Beer №4, he tells me, “Your beat in life is to shit all over HR.” I don’t really agree with that, per se — I think my beat in life is to find my own path and maybe cause a few people to think differently along the way — but I don’t like HR, no, and I find it completely useless inside most organizations. There are a few gems, yes, but not many.

Let’s parse this out a little bit.

Part 1: In general, executives do not care about HR

Written about this maybe 127 times in the last half-decade, but here’s a good pull-quote that my friend sent me through Facebook once:

I just had a final interview for a senior HR Director position. The interview was with the CEO and two senior leadership team members.

The CEO was so disconnected. When he asked what was important to me, I said something along the lines of “that the role of HR is respected and valued” HE ROLLED HIS EYES

Then one of the senior leadership team members said, “quite…