Once upon a time, in a world long ago and far away, one could approach a project manger with a set of skills when seeking employment. Said manager would talk with the candidate and talk about skills and goals – thinking of more than just the immediate need. If the manager was impressed – after all, the manager had knowledge of his needs and control of his budget – he would set up a few other conversations with others in the group. These conversations were called “interviews”; the main goal being to determine compatibility of personality and skills.
If all was copacetic, the manager would inform the Personnel Dept that he wished to hire this person as the fit and need seemed a good match. Personnel would arrange the necessary process for bring this person on board … and all would be happy.
But the inevitability of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy overcame good intentions.
In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
In every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
The Personnel Dept became “Human Resources” and became more interested in statistics than “humans”, and knowing nothing of the subtleties of skills, became the gateway to determining appropriate skill sets for the company. After all, no one is irreplaceable and all skill sets are identical.
So we have HR Depts that spend budgets on employee morale: “We’re all ON-ions”; “We’re all Micron-ites” … and other such nonsense. As long as budgets aren’t spent on actual employee morale (a good company does not need to expend effort keeping good employees. A bad typical company uses fear as a motivator)
And the world as it once was went to hell … on a road paved with good intentions.