Last week, I wrote an article called, “How Will Trump Fail?”

The article lightly applies the science behind insights to predict the ways in which the Trump administration will fail the American electorate.

It’s a piece meant to stimulate a response. My audience consists of mostly upper-middle-class readers who work in HR, marketing, IT, and finance. They have the intellectual capacity to read a story about politics — and disagree with the political POV — but learn a thing or two about how to prevent failure by applying the premortem methodology to work and life.

Except for the HR portion of my audience.

Well, some of them.

My friends over at Human Resources Today published my blog post, as they normally do, but this time it caused a bunch of HR professionals to have a hissy fit.

Like, for real, some of them were very hostile.

I’m not shocked. Middle-aged HR professionals over the age of 45 — without a VP title — have a low rate of job satisfaction. They complain about everything because, as they near the final stages of their career, they don’t have a sense of autonomy or purpose.

So, yeah, they sent me all sorts of crazy messages and left a bunch of dumb comments that I stopped approving because most of them are lame.

“How does this relate to HR? Give him a chance. The Obama experiment is over. It’s time for something new.”

The fiery response to my article had me thinking about Jackie Robinson. He integrated Major League Baseball, and some people called it an experiment. During his time in the MLB — and even for years after — people felt like it was an experiment that went wrong. And it took years for professional baseball teams to integrate because southern farm teams “course corrected” and refused to expand the minor league talent pool beyond young white men.

But, eventually, change happened.

So I’m not surprised that, in 2016, a bunch of HR weenies who love to complain about Obama’s job-killing programs — but seem to have a job, themselves — complained about the political nature of my post. Simply put, it’s a natural (and racist) reaction to eight years of an Obama presidency that shook many people hard.

“Who are we as a country, and who am I as a person, if we have a black president? And now you want a woman? No way.”

And those big HR whiners — who cash their paychecks every two weeks and never created a job of their own — went a step beyond the friendly confines of my blog and complained to Human Resources Today’s founder and aggregator-in-chief, a dude named Tony Karrer.

“Why did you publish such a political article? This isn’t HR.”

As the founder of Human Resources Today, he likes his subscribers to be happy. And I knew this would happen, so I proactively reached out to Tony and thanked him for having the courage to syndicate my post.

It’s not really courage, mind you. It’s an algorithm that grabbed my article and sent it out via email before anyone at Human Resources Today noticed it. Nobody is getting a Pulitzer Prize here. But I wanted Tony to know that digital aggregators, also called content thieves, are an important part of our digital landscape.

Simply put, diverse opinions matter. Great publishers (and great aggregators) should give the people a healthy mix of what they want — and what they need — instead of jamming sycophantic content down people’s throats. The decision to publish a dissenting article in a tightly-knit ecosystem like Human Resources Today isn’t a straightforward calculation; however, the fear of losing a few subscribers shouldn’t factor into the decision on whether or not to publish a post.

Well, I’m an idiot because Tony Karrer took down the article. It no longer appears on Human Resources Today, which is disappointing.

But I don’t take this as a loss because I know that, for a brief moment, I riled up several thousand HR professionals and challenged their beliefs.

If that’s not what blogging is all about, then I don’t know what I’m doing here.

Category: Work31 Comments

31 Comments

  2. I’m a middle-aged, over 45, HR professional and I do not fall into your categorization. I just wanted you to know that there are some of us who are progressive and are trying to “disrupt” the profession. I love your blogs. Thank you.

  3. If it provides any consolation, I got a lot of entertainment value seeing you destroy all of the obnoxious, uneducated, and bigoted responses to your post. You are spot on Laurie. I’d echo Kristen’s comment… we may be the minority, but there are HR folks who are progressive (in our profession and our politics).

  4. You go, girl! Your blogs are well written and your arguments are logical. Thank you for sharing your point of view.

  7. Love your Blogs and insightsd – they give good food for thought. And yes there are progressive HR people out there. Keep up the good work

  8. While often you offer good insights or I wouldn’t your blog. Other times I just shake my head at how self-righteous you can be because you seem to need to attack anyone who spdisagrees with you.

    I’m over 45, have been in HR over 20 years and don’t have VP in my title. I supported Obama and was devastated when Trump lost.

    Honestly, when I read your sterotypical description of women over 45 (who don’t have a VP title) it made me recoil as much as Trumps tweets over the last couple of years.

    You need to get over yourself, Laurie. You wrote a piece to get a resonse. It obviously wasn’t the high praise response you believe your opinion deserves. People have a right to disagree with you. The ironic thing is your posting nasty comments about people you don’t even know puts you in the same league as the people you are railing against.

    And, yes, I am mad as hell that Trump,won and now I’m also mad that his nastiness is rubbing off on everyone.

    • I didn’t identify the gender in the statistic, but it is a good guess. And it happens to be true. I really appreciate how you read my blog despite how you don’t like me. That’s kind of cool. And I’m a 41-year-old woman, so I appreciate you even more than you know.

  9. Darn, I missed out on a good article? I am always open to discussion about HR, the good, the bad, and people who no longer have a business being in HR. We have evolved in so many ways. We are disrupting HR because it is no longer just about policies and procedures but engaging and leveraging the human part of our profession! I’m not your typical HR! I don’t fit the mold you mentioned above!

  12. I am stuck on the fact that HR people voted for Trump. We are supposed to be safe inclusive spaces that work to overturn institutional racism. It’s terrifying that I could need HR help and have to get it from someone who endorses explicitly racist behavior. ugh.

  13. Whatever you do, please don’t stop! There are plenty of professionals out here who are always looking to learn, and what better way to introduce a new concept than with timely, relevant examples?

    What might be fun would be an article on the hypocrisy of the HR “professional” that supports a leader that boldly exhibits the same attitudes and behaviors that get the average American worker fired in 2016…

    .

  15. Shame I don’t subscribe to Human Resources Today (or any other HR aggregator….) but I am sad I missed the discussion your article generated! Keep on disrupting Laurie. X

  16. Your blog is SO worth reading because although you swing and miss 95% of the time, every so often you make a strike like “How Will Trump Fail?” It was a great piece of writing and was therefore bound to alienate the wider HR community, whose concepts of justice and fairness will always be at odds with those of normal human beings. Just keep on swishin’ that bat…

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