What is the difference between HR and IT/tech in terms of power and salary in a company?

Unfortunately, it is easy to get a job in HR. One only needs to be a bureaucrat, without any particular thinking skills. By contrast, it is very difficult to get an IT job or a Tech job.

  HR Payroll   Apr 22, 2024   0   37  Add to Reading List

You have put your finger on one of the great myths of the current era (though I suspect, unintentionally).

Which is that HR is a seat of great power, hence high salary, in any major company.

Which in turn has led armies of ambitious youngsters to major in HR, expecting it to be a fast and easy route to having authority and making lots of money, without having to work very hard or know very much or be very smart. Those things (working hard, knowing a great deal, and being smart) are reserved for the less-enlightened, who go to work in IT and Tech.

The view seems to be that the HR people control the hiring and firing, and everyone else’s salaries, and the work rules, and the fringe benefits. Therefore, they are the power people who are in charge of everything important. Definitely the place to be working. Power, control, and high salary without any visible effort. The modern equivalent of the tyrant King, who owns the National Treasury and who can order heads to be lopped off.

Sorry, but that presumed role and power of HR is just a fallacy.

They don’t have any indepedent power. They are just vassals of the senior corporate management.

HR is only an administrative function. They are responsible to assure compliance with labor laws, and to collect data and file reports with the government. And to see that the weekly and semi-monthly payrolls are processed. Basically a pretty tedious and unfulfilling job.

HR is only an overhead burden. They don’t produce any revenues. They don’t add anything to profits — they just use up profits produced by the operating divisions. They don’t contribute to product performance or quality. They don’t reduce manufacturing costs or distribution costs. They don’t save the company any money. They don’t design anything, they don’t make anything, they don’t sell anything, they don’t plan anything, they don't solve any problems, they don’t avoid any waste. Tney don’t make the company more competitive. HR, unfortunately, is only an unavoidable cost center, mostly required because of government.

By contrast,

  • IT controls information and computation. Nothing can be done without these, which is why you see a computer on nearly every desk these days, and virtually everyone walks around with a computer in their pocket.
  • Tech are the people who design and produce the products, which are the engine that draws money into the company. Without the Tech people, you wouldn’t have a company. Nor any jobs for the IT people, and certainly no need for an entire floor of the company’s office building devoted to housing the HR drones.

Unfortunately, it is easy to get a job in HR. One only needs to be a bureaucrat, without any particular thinking skills. By contrast, it is very difficult to get an IT job or a Tech job. One actually has to study and understand and retain complex ideas while in college — instead of majoring in something really interesting such as Political Science or Art History or Black Studies or Gender Studies or even HR itself.

Still, you have to give the HR people credit. Thy have been able to create an image, among many of the less-perceptive youngsters, that HR is something of a pinnacle of power and high incomes, short of being in the Executive Tower itself. That is almost a miracle of public relations, right up there with the people who win election to government positions.

So you ask what is the difference between HR and IT/Tech. The answer is that companies succeed and grow because of IT/Tech people. Companies survive, in spite of HR people