Hot on the heels of Season 2, I am working on the next season of HR Data Doodles. Too soon to speculate on when it will be available, but it might be around the beginning of next year. We’ll see.
The idea for the season has come from many developments in the business world and how Human Resources can help deal with them.
Stay tuned!
These up-to-the-moment workplace comics from Turetsky offer a diverse, charmingly
rendered cast engaged in relatable office-world comedy, complete with one goof of a
character, Teddy, “a regular fountain of bad ideas” who elicits last-panel eyerolls from his
colleagues. But despite Teddy’s insistence that a good compromise between in-person and
remote work would be to let him show up at the office in his pajamas, Turetsky is after more
than laughs. These “HR Data Doodles” both celebrate and gently provoke serious thinking
about the role of data, analytics, and clear planning in businesses, especially when it comes
to HR, hiring, and implanting new management systems.
The team at the Played Out Gaming Company continually finds itself cheering about the
abundant research it’s conducted or exciting new technologies it might implement—and
again and again, Turetsky depicts the most clear-headed leaders stepping back to make
sure someone actually utilizes that research or dares to ask “Maybe we think about business
questions to solve then figure out what kind of Big Data will be useful for us.” Throughout, the
characters, usually in meetings, go from proposing big new ideas (build a proprietary tool for
data analysis!) to realizing that crucial questions haven’t been asked and vital work hasn’t
been done. Amusingly, one team, eager to hire new developers for a new game, decides that
rather than do the hard work of writing up job requirements and salary information, maybe
they could develop an app to do so instead.
Many of Turetsky’s strips, mostly presented in four panel grids with appropriately jargon-
heavy office dialogue, emphasize the need for clear visions, for taking the effort to get on the
same page, for talking about data and analytics after identifying what problems to target.
That message shines through despite some tricky-to-follow placement of word balloons—
the order in which to read the dialogue is often unintuitive. As office satire, these “doodles”
are warm and incisive.
Takeaway: Warm comics celebration of HR and data analytics teams.
Comparable Titles: Doug Savage’s Savage Chickens, Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas’s
Humor, Seriously.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: B
Illustrations: B+
Editing: B
Marketing copy: A-
from BookLife Reviews
