Does HR Really Need to "Stay in Their Lane"?
SOM MORE THOUGHTS #1
THE BIG THING
I've been sitting with this video from Laura Fryer all week — "HR Needs to Stay in Their Lane" — and I still don't know exactly where I land on it, which is kind of why I wanted to bring it here instead of just subtweeting about it.
For context, if you don't know her, Fryer spent years at Xbox and other studios, so this isn't someone speaking from the outside. Her argument is basically that game development used to run on honest, sometimes blunt creative debate, and that HR departments have slowly turned into culture police, to the point where developers are scared to say "this isn't working" out loud. She's got real examples — job titles getting flagged as offensive, managers getting pulled into what she calls "struggle sessions" for trying to hold people accountable. And she's careful to say she's not asking for toxicity, just room to disagree.
I don't think she's wrong that a lot of studios have gotten weird and conflict-averse. That part tracks with stuff I've heard from people in the industry for years now.
Here's where it gets complicated for me, though.
MY TAKE
I think Fryer's take comes from a real place, but also from a specific vantage point — one that's a little frozen in time. She talks about wanting more room for debate without it turning into toxicity, but she never really grapples with the fact that dev teams today are younger, culturally different, and have way more marginalized people in them than the industry she came up in. A lot of what gets labeled "walking on eggshells" is actually people trying to build workplaces where microaggressions don't just get waved off as "just debate."
Both things can be true. Studios can be too conflict-averse, AND HR can be doing real, necessary work protecting people who didn't have that protection before. I'd genuinely love to get someone who actually works in HR on Spawn On Me to push back on some of this directly. Not to dunk on Fryer, just because I think this conversation needs more than one perspective in the room.
🎙️ Podcast — "Is America the Bad Guy?" with Ta-Nehisi Coates Hasan Minhaj sat down with Ta-Nehisi Coates and it turned into one of the more thought-provoking conversations I've heard in a while — the current state of America, how we got here, and how shortsighted we've been geopolitically. Worth the time.
🎮 Games — Future Knight I'm really excited about this one. The music and the art style alone have me locked in.
🏀 Sports — The NBA is back. Need I say more? Here are all the big matchups for launch week - https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/49471934/nba-full-schedule-2026-2027-games-watch-faq-rivalries-matchups]
UNTIL NEXT TIME
Homeboy Sandman dropped a new album, and it's exactly what I needed on rotation right now. Go give it a spin.
https://open.spotify.com/album/2BltnjcS26TTGd8CWxxNHo?si=xkdchpeMTkqtDGeueTAouA