Recently read articles by two contemporary business tycoons: Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban. Buffett was calling on the US government to stop coddling the rich: “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” He went on to write that Government should increase the tax rates for the rich above 1M and 10M while giving the middle and lower class as many breaks as possible.

Cuban postulated a solution to improve our economic situation immediately with instant job creation: “Rather than having Dems and Republicans fight ideological battles about job creation, lets get direct. Lets just ask companies to tell us how many jobs they would create and how much they need and see what it all adds up to and go from there.” By allowing companies to identify how many jobs they’d create with X number of dollars, we give them the money and bypass the bullshit we saw 3 years ago with million dollar bonuses out of TARP funds. And by bypass I mean completely side step government and their expensive committees, main street and their corrupt executives and inject cash right into the heart of the economy… you know, real PEOPLE.

So I read these two posts and a slew of others that all explained what every level-headed person in the world is thinking – why do we keep making the same mistakes? Why did the US go on the brink of default during a politicized wrangling of words? Did all that political posturing help our country or just help those playing poker with our economy?

I say it not only hurt it, but it ripped open a scab that could easily trigger another recession.

Here’s how all this relates to HR technology. When I started on the path of gowerk, I was told that my product was a waste of time, that there are a million vendors out there doing the same exact thing. But I didn’t like any other vendors product and I wanted to build one that I liked. Once we built our product, I was told it wasn’t as robust as the big tech vendors’ products and it would crumple with 1000 users under one client. Once we proved it can manage a large load of clients with thousands of employees per client, I was told it didn’t have much of a future without the mechanics of social media. Guess what, gowerk can do that too. And more.

From this seat, I can easily draw comparisons between political ideologies in washington and rhetoric in business and technology. The social media debate for one: is it good or bad for HR? Cloud computing, is it the future? Hactivism and our enterprise data, how safe are we? I can go on and on. So much talking, so much debating, so many experts.

But guess what HR isn’t about any of that, it’s about the heart of a business… you know, real PEOPLE.

Let me sign off with a quote by Steve Jobs that resonates every day with me while we build our products at work – it is as relevant to HR as it is to the US economy and politics:

“You gotta start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try and sell it.” Steve Jobs – 1997.