HR Dinosaurs and Rebuilding the World

Kristin McTiernan offered this insightful observation on X this morning. It’s about a set of hiring reqs for writers posted by xAI. I think it’s spot on, and deserves a read.

I think this is why the next few years AT LEAST of American cultural reform will need to follow the "Iron Age" model, where artists and businessmen work to rebuild the institutions of western civilization from the ground up.

And as much as I admire business innovators like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, it is ALSO why they cannot be relied on for guidance on employment policy, including H1Bs. They are clearly too far removed from a direct and real-world awareness of what has been happening in the hiring market for that. The layers of HR-speak these job reqs are drenched with are prima facie evidence of it.

Much of our country's institutional and business processes are clearly still captured by the same calcified and dysfunctional credentialism that has done so much harm to the American working class over the last dozen years. And as this illustrates, even the best of what's left clearly can't be relied on to turn that corruption around on its own. Rooting it out will take a full "Parallel Economy" effort from the best of those who understand what caused it. And it will have to start from a small scale and grow, to eventually outcompete and replace the HR dinosaurs of the past.