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In 2012 a curious person on the web—likely an enthusiastic entrepreneur—asked a simple question on Quora: Does a startup need an HR person? This was in the infancy of the current boom—or bust—we’re now in; Now-defunct shopping website Fab had just raised $117 million; Pinterest landed $100 million, Box raised $125 million, and Square got $200 million.
Startups at the time were figuring out how to ride this wave, so it’s unsurprising that the first and most popular answer provided was this: "No, you don’t need an HR person."
Things have changed since then. For one, many believe the startup boom may be coming to an end, what with the rate of venture funding—along with many valuations—ramping downward. Startups are also being forced to grapple with their internal cultural problems; big companies like Twitter, Google, and Apple are being asked to divulge their internal demographics thanks to widespread calls for a more open and transparent work culture. But even with an insular industry seeing slightly more public dialog about its intrinsic biases and inequalities, startups still have difficulty figuring out how to maintain and cultivate their workforce. And this aversion to HR may explain some part of that.
Via The Learning Factor
Many startups built their culture without the bureaucracy of human resources, but replacing a person with software can lead to problems.