Why Moderna Merged Its Tech and HR Departments
43 comments
·May 13, 2025spaceport
Having worked in HR as the only tech role in the past, HRIS, I can say w/o doubt this is a low value add move to the tech dept. However the free food stream from temp and external agencies to HR is legit insane and the quality top notch so hopefully they can share with the tech dept
Also just to say it if you don't know it, HR is the biggest "rules for thee, not for me" group in your org. Everything bad you have ever imagined, it's worse.
tacker2000
“Tech” in this sense means engineers creating internal company tools in order to maximize efficiency, so this is just a cost center, that is building custom LLm tooling. No IP is being built or sold here.
Therefore I can understand the approach of combining it with HR in this case, since efficiency also means replacing humans with machines and saving costs there. Now that AI is getting big they can think of more areas where human work is getting superfluous.
The question is how far this can go and how much human labor they can turn into LLM responses.
lemonwaterlime
Who the HR department reports to tells you a lot about the company’s priorities. In most cases, HR reports to the CEO. HR could also report to the CTO, CFO, even the board of directors directly.
In this case it seems that HR has shifted from reporting to the CIO to reporting to the CTO. Such a move on its surface could indicate close knit arrangements regarding hiring, technology used by the devs, and even the possibility of HR using more tech to perform their own duties.
For instance, there might be more tech savvy people actually doing the screening itself due to close proximity to the tech department. Less siloes could mean better devs get through the early stages of the interview process that could normally be erroneously or prematurely filtered out.
cinntaile
The head of HR was working closely with their CIO who quit so she was the best fit for the role. The HR department is presumably small so it's no issue to absorb it into tech. The AI spin sounds a bit fake.
constantcrying
>The HR department is presumably small so it's no issue to absorb it into tech.
That is a terrible reason to merge departments. You want people with similar tasks who need to communicate the most be closer together. Putting unrelated people into a department is an easy way to create conflict and dysfunction.
>The head of HR was working closely with their CIO who quit so she was the best fit for the role.
Very consistently work places where people in important management positions had no clue about what the people under them actually do where the worst places I worked at. At the same time having superiors who understand your work makes communications with them much easier.
Having a person with no tech experience leading a tech department is a very easy way to create a terrible tech department.
socalgal2
> You want people with similar tasks who need to communicate the most be closer together.
I'd shorten that to "You want people who need to communicate the most be closer together."
The worst thing to ever happen at a video game company I worked at was when they separated the art department from the programming department. Artist needed to communicate with programmers and visa versa to make the best product. Instead they got siloed by department and the communication went south. Programmers didn't easily learn pain points and needs of artists and artists didn't learn how to use the latest features because communication became harder
jfengel
Often, employees need to communicate to two sets of people. The HR people, for example, need to talk to the rank and file employees, and also each other. In house developers talk to IT and to their users.
There is an eternal cycle of bringing a function together, then decentralizing it, and repeating. No matter what you do, someone is going to find it convenient and someone else will find it inconvenient.
cinntaile
It depends on how they merge it, maybe they merged it in name only.
> Having a person with no tech experience leading a tech department is a very easy way to create a terrible tech department.
Oh yes, I agree. It sounds like a terrible idea overall.
paulcole
> Having a person with no tech experience leading a tech department is a very easy way to create a terrible tech department.
I agree with this. Having a tech person lead the tech department creates a reasonable floor for output of the team.
However, I think the ceiling is higher when a non-tech person is leading the group. When a tech person is leading the group the ceiling is (roughly) their technical ability. The non-tech person can be more open to new ideas, alternative approaches, flexibility, change, etc. because they don’t have the same built-in biases and preconceived notions as a tech person.
Again this is a risky approach and has a high failure rate but the biggest wins can be massive.
constantcrying
>However, I think the ceiling is higher when a non-tech person is leading the group. When a tech person is leading the group the ceiling is (roughly) their technical ability. The non-tech person can be more open to new ideas, alternative approaches, flexibility, change, etc. because they don’t have the same built-in biases and preconceived notions as a tech person.
Wrong. The person fundamentally does not understand what the employees are doing and can not make informed decisions. You are correct that the decisions will include more "out of the box" thinking, but this will make the entire department a torture chamber for the employees as they are suffering under decisions which are obviously nonsensical and counter productive. Prioritizing novelty over competency is a road straight to dysfunction.
The people who are the best at implementing new concepts are the rare cases of people who have both a deep technical foundation and great leadership skills. Those actually can come up with new Ideas which work.
karaterobot
> The biotech company late last year announced the creation of a new role, chief people and digital technology officer, promoting its human resources chief Tracey Franklin to the spot.
I've been wondering recently when boards of directors will realize that the role of CEO might quite acceptably be split into two parts: an executive, who makes decisions to implement a high-level vision based on data and cold-blooded analysis, and (for lack of a better word) a culture head, who is the public face of the company, and keeps relationships with people, and gives inspiring speeches, and so on.
The executive part, it seems to me, might quite adequately be replaced by an AI. I don't even mean a hypothetical future AI, I mean literally the level of GPT models we have today. People's response to this is often "but what about genius visionaries like Steve Jobs?" and I admit that they can't be replaced. But, I'm talking about the median CEO, of the median corporation. Or even the bottom 80%, maybe. I don't think that part of their job is safe from AI in the medium term, except by gatekeeping and inertia. I firmly believe AI could do as good a job at that than most CEOs, and better than many, more cheaply, and more predictably.
(Everybody else's jobs aren't safe from AI, of course. It's just a matter of AI agents working up the ladder of complexity, from intern-level work, to junior, then senior, and so on. An important assumption here is that the executive part of being a CEO is not particularly difficult, or different from what AI has been shown to excel at already. Just that once the decision maker's job is in danger of being replaced, there will all of a sudden be a lot more skepticism about AI's ability to do human tasks.)
The other half of that split, the inspiring networker with amazing soft skills, who is good at driving the company culture and building relationships, would be harder to replace with an AI for the foreseeable future. Because they're not as good at it right now, and because people don't want to be led by a machine. That'll be true for a generation at least, but I imagine that could change as well. Things get normalized, and people's expectations change when their experience changes.
What Moderna just did is not what I've described above, but it does feel like a step toward it.
photonthug
> The executive part, it seems to me, might quite adequately be replaced by an AI.
To understand who is going to be replaced by AI and in what order, I think you have to stop reasoning based on what is possible or effective or a good fit and just think more about the politics of power, moats, who benefits from distribution of responsibility /liability, etc.
Executives and lawyers will absolutely be the last jobs standing even if it might seem like they could be the first on the chopping block.. reverse is true for software engineers.
wheaties
You just defined the role of COO at most companies. CEO has always been about sales, brand, vision, (capital raises,) etc. It's the COO who keeps the company moving.
bethekidyouwant
Is this because you think that the median CEOs decisions based on their data are no better than random?
alephnerd
> I've been wondering recently when boards of directors will realize that the role of CEO might quite acceptably be split into two parts: an executive, who makes decisions to implement a high-level vision based on data and cold-blooded analysis, and (for lack of a better word) a culture head, who is the public face of the company, and keeps relationships with people, and gives inspiring speeches, and so on.
This has always been a thing. This is why Chief Product Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief of Staff, and other similar roles exist.
tkluck
Even under the AI-maximalist assumption that human workers and LLMs are going to be interchangeable, I'm having a hard time seeing the logic.
LLMs are not going to go on parental leave; have various protected statuses; have worker protection, visa issues or a compensation structure. In other words, there's no synergy at all from having them be managed in the same way as actual human resources. (And I'm sorry for using the term human resources unironically -- that just follows from the AI maximalist assumption.)
There's maybe some synergy in workforce planning, but if HR was doing that then there's already something broken in the business. HR is supposed to contribute legal expertise first, cultural and team dynamics expertise second, and process expertise not at all.
alephnerd
A lot of people on HN don't seem to realize they might work in a cost center.
The best thing you can ever do for your career is try to understand how your job directly generates value for customers in a visible manner. If your job does not, transfer to a team where that does hold, change jobs, or learn how to play politics.
greesil
Tell me how you feel about R&D
alephnerd
Strongly in favor. But it needs to be tied with visible value. For a company like Moderna, software does not generate IP or R&D that can visibly provide customer value.
Fundamental research is critical, but needs to be funded by governments because the lead time is long. Ideally, private sector commercial partners are also found to help commercialize fundamentals research once it is shown to be viable in the market as an application.
The whole point of innovation and engineering is to find a solution to a problem.
nickdothutton
Reminder: In large corporations, HR is mostly just a "people risk" department. People are a necessary input, and with them comes all sorts of risk. It is the HR departments job to advise and manage that risk both in general via policy and specifically from case to case. Once you understand HR like that it makes a lot more sense.
tiahura
One might think about why companies have to spend a disproportionate amount of administrative resources every time an employee grouses?
conartist6
I give it six years for them to regret this.
At some point, enough of your technical people leaving because they have lost hope for a better future. That is a way that any once-healthy company can die.
alephnerd
IT and software doesn't generate visible customer-facing value for Moderna - a pharma company the generates revenue through discoverying and selling therapeutics IP.
It's like accounting is for them - back office infra that you need to keep the lights on, but nothing else.
sys_64738
Human Resources should really be named Employer Resources as it exists to protect the company from liability for their employees.
sathomasga
I dunno, it kind of accurately reflects the view that in capitalist firms employees are resources, e.g. to be exploited.
I'd vote for the old terminology: Personnel Department.
lelanthran
> I dunno, it kind of accurately reflects the view that in capitalist firms employees are resources, e.g. to be exploited.
Not that accurate, in my view: a resource is something that's a positive thing to be exploited.
"Human resources" in most companies are not there primarily to exploit the employee to their full potential/productivity/burnout level. They're there to protect the company from the employees!
bartread
That’s true but also a bit reductionist. And even in that regard, what they federally do is assist managers. So, for example, if a manager has an underperforming team member HR will ensure that manager follows process in applying performance management so that the manager follows process and doesn’t expose the company to liability.
Beyond this they’re also often key players in recruitment marketing, employer branding, hiring and selection, understanding the broader employment market to ensure pay and benefits are inline with desired industry norms, health and wellbeing, and the list goes on.
None of this is ever perfect and, of course, we can all think of companies where it’s been highly dysfunctional.
But, nonetheless, claiming all they do is protect the company from employees is still too reductive.
lotsofpulp
I am a resource for my kids, my spouse, and the rest of my friends and family. I am also a resource to my employer and other customers.
In any organization, a resource can vary from things such as land, chemicals, machines, humans, books, etc.
The term Human Resources seems accurate to a refer to a group of people that deal with the humans in the organization.
I do not see why “resources” is seen as having a negative connotation in this context. Of course, just like a family can mistreat a resourceful family member, so can any organization mistreat a human resource.
itsoktocry
Is this supposed to be witty or something?
Employees are human resources.
sokoloff
Never forget that “human” is an adjective in that phrase, rather than a noun.
s1artibartfast
I literally don't understand how it could be a noun.
jbverschoor
AI isn’t human, and the work done by them might be taxed as employment in the future
null
AbstractH24
When you read the words “Human Resources” in the most literal sense you kind of wonder why we ever expected anything rose from the department
A con almost on par with the term “global warming” and “climate change.”
constantcrying
The only thing I can imagine being more hellish than your coworkers being HR people is your coworkers being HR people who use LLMs to do their jobs.
This is just guesswork, but I think it is likely that HR came under serious pressure as many of their jobs started to become very obviously obsolete. So the HR chief came up with a plan to combine her irrelevant department with an actually still relevant department, in a bid to maintain corporate power.
There is no real business case behind this. Even the article fails to provide any coherent reason for this nonsensical merger.
everdrive
HR _loves_ using LLMs. If there's a central authority telling them the appropriate way to speak, and the appropriate way to feel, they can't resist it.
constantcrying
Moderna is, as the article points out, under a lot of financial pressures. Obviously reducing headcount is a way to reduce spending. I don't think it is unlikely that top management looked at HR and determined the department was far too large for what it did.
https://archive.is/0qWXw