# Quote — Max Barry, Company

> Sydney feels an affinity with Human Resources. She likes the name, with its not-so-hidden implication that employees are an exploitable resource, like stock or real estate. And not a particularly valuable one, despite that old chestnut about employees being the company’s most important asset. Sydney knows the truth: give the company cash resources, give it strategic partnerships, give it inventory; give it anything but prickly, unreliable, idiosyncratic humans. People are the worst: you can’t stack them, or (easily) relocate them, and you can’t even just leave them alone to accumulate value. That’s why the company requires HR: a department to transform humans into resources.

- Author: [Max Barry](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry.md)
- Book: [Company](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company.md)
- Page: 226
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Barry#Company_(2006)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/sydney-feels-an-affinity

## More from this book

> Senior Management may have been incompetent; it may have been corrupt; it was certainly full of assholes—but they were their incompetent, corrupt assholes.

p. 294 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/senior-management-may.md)

> “What happened to sticking together? What happened to teamwork?” He gives Holly a dirty look.
>
> “Hey,” Holly says. “You know what Roger told me? He said there’s no such thing as teamwork. It’s a con. The company doesn’t promote teams. If you want to get ahead you have to screw everybody else and look after yourself. Co-workers are competitors. Roger told me the truth: there’s no I in team, but there’s no U, either!”

p. 237 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/what-happened-to-sticking.md)

> Mona says bravely, “I can’t see how this will work. You can’t abolish Senior Management. Zephyr isn’t a democracy. It’s a corporation.”
>
> “I believe,” Klausman says, “that Jones is advancing the theory that those two concepts are not mutually exclusive.”

p. 289 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/max-barry/company/mona-says-bravely.md)