This whole notion of "HR isn't your friend" is nonsensical. No department at the company is your friend. You stop performing at your job, you will probably be fired--or promoted.
Even your real friends won't be your friends for very long if their own self-interests are always in contention against your own.
HR is fulfills a specific sets of roles for the company and they exist to look out for the best interest of the company, the same way pretty much any other department operates.
Even executives have to operate in such a manner or be in breach of their fiduciary duties.
If your work environment is toxic, find a better environment---if you have that luxury as some do not. If you think the problem isn't pervasive, try to change it with the help of HR--clearly it's in the companies best interest not to have toxic work environments.
Of course not, except not many disguise themselves as your friend, that was the point.
Nobody thinks the finance department is there to make your life easy as a developer or to somehow take your side vis-a-vis an argument with the higher-ups.
But somehow the image of "HR" working for the employees and advocating for them persists.
Just read Jeff's email as an example. "Take it up with HR". In other words, don't worry, we'll fix it for ya.
> But somehow the image of "HR" working for the employees and advocating for them persists.
One of the most important techniques HR departments have in maximizing the extracted value to extraction cost ratio for the company's "human resources" is to convince those resources that the HR department is their advocate within the company rather than the company's office responsible for the aforementioned cost/benefit optimization.
(OTOH, there are good reasons for a well-run HR department to be an employee advocate within the company on issues in many cases, since often the cost effective way to keep employees productive is to address their needs and desires; but its important to understand why that may sometimes be the case, and why it is not universally the case.)
Even your real friends won't be your friends for very long if their own self-interests are always in contention against your own.
HR is fulfills a specific sets of roles for the company and they exist to look out for the best interest of the company, the same way pretty much any other department operates.
Even executives have to operate in such a manner or be in breach of their fiduciary duties.
If your work environment is toxic, find a better environment---if you have that luxury as some do not. If you think the problem isn't pervasive, try to change it with the help of HR--clearly it's in the companies best interest not to have toxic work environments.