21–30 of 296 posts
And no amount of documentation solves this because documentation is useless if it can't present itself at the time of need. Because rest assured, no once (including me) can find anything using the horrible Confluence search.
In the spirit of the old saying, "the two happiest days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy a boat, and the day they sell it." The best advice I got starting out was, "be indispensable." The best advice I got four years later was, "don't be indispensable." In a growing company, the indispensable people may find themselves being left holding the bag while new initiatives are undertaken. I very quickly learned…
In short, make it a point to share knowledge anyway. Keep a wiki, well written notes or documents, README.md's, whatever. Make it a point that people who are backing you up acknowledge and understand what you have and most importantly ask them to grow that body of knowledge.
In my experience if a company is so incompetent as to allow a single person to genuinely become indispensable, they're also so incompetent as to barely know it, and do nothing about that person leaving.
Only after leaving will the fires really begin (or intensify), which is probably just a variation on business as usual anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is something to be said for being indispensible for novel problems, instead of for known problems. Some of the worst behavior I've seen in both myself and others has come when you can hold your company hostage by refusing to do something. Even when you are using it for 'the greater good', that's not a good look and not a great feeling. You shouldn't have to go with the nuclear option to get something done, even…
Oh, fire all the heroes, I have worked at one of those places. The people in the know were let go, as some kind of pre-emptive strike of just that nature. Heaven forfend that anyone but the organization have leverage. This was managed before I had a chance to get a Chesterson's Fence view of the processes. The result was not good: deciphering the how of things was bad enough, but the why , the contexts of the decisio…
The people who have reverence for the heroes are as much or more of a problem as the actual heroes, and they need to be shaken severely. It's going to be ugly any way you slice it because like so many things in software, you're in a position where someone should have yelled "stop" years before and instead things just kept going, far past unreasonable into a first-rate dystopia.
If you fire one belligerent hero as an example to the others, you might be able to make it work. But if you have one 'database guy' or 'backend person', odds are very good that they're going to go exactly as fast as they want to go and smile and say 'no' when people ask for major changes that would break up a logjam. If they aren't particularly articulate about why things are the way they are it's easy to get the impression they are running things instead of the titular managers.
The amazing thing is that, depending on what the corporation needs, the worker is made to feel either of these things.
The post in the OP is the worker feeling the latter, with a twist: being made to feel indispensable to shove off as much work as possible on the worker.
In the spirit of the old saying, "the two happiest days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy a boat, and the day they sell it." The best advice I got starting out was, "be indispensable." The best advice I got four years later was, "don't be indispensable." In a growing company, the indispensable people may find themselves being left holding the bag while new initiatives are undertaken. I very quickly learned…
Second, being indispensable doesn't do a whole lot for job security. If the company is doing well, you need to perform exactly at average to stay employed, no more. And if the company is down in the dumps and there are mass layoffs, who is going to judge how much knowledge you have in your head? All the people who know how good you are are probably getting fired as well.
Third, you are probably not as important as you think you are. Upper management isn't sitting around singing your praises in their weekly meeting. No, they are focused on the rising star who is executing new ideas and launching new product lines. You are meanwhile being taken for granted.
Now, if you are in this position the author writes about, the time to get out of it is now. Realize that no one can help you but yourself. Start redirecting people, or ignore them altogether. Make noise up the management ladder. Play dumb if you have to. Eventually the rest of the company will find some new punching bag and leave you alone.
In the spirit of the old saying, "the two happiest days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy a boat, and the day they sell it." The best advice I got starting out was, "be indispensable." The best advice I got four years later was, "don't be indispensable." In a growing company, the indispensable people may find themselves being left holding the bag while new initiatives are undertaken. I very quickly learned…
What's your goal, though? I'd like my company to not absolutely 100% need my constant presence, and I don't want to be in the author's position where he is not doing what he could be most valuable doing. But I do want my company to think "wow, that ivraatiems, we're sure lucky to have him." I would want them to think twice about firing me or laying me off if layoffs were happening. I definitely would not like to have…
Easy, right?
Does anybody else ever reflect on how, in our modern world, utter servility is assumed? I mean are we all serfs now? Are we discussing the best method for licking master's boot?
The only way to truely make it, is to find someone else, and jump on that bandwagon. Whether that some else is a government contract, or seed funding, or an admissions board. You rub someone elses back and hope to get your just deserts in due time.
The first thing to remember is – no one is indispensable. If you get hit by a bus tomorrow the company will go on without you. People may have a bit of trouble at first, but new processes will develop and new people will gain expertise just as you have now. Heck the company might be better off in the long run without knowledge bottlenecks. Second, being indispensable doesn't do a whole lot for job security. If the co…