If you are indispensable - the most productive thing you can do for wherever your work and for yourself is probably to train others to do your job.
On Being Indispensable
41–50 of 296 posts
Re: On Being Indispensable
#42In 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…
I think one of the problems from "being indispensable" is the direction it takes. Being indispensable in regards to people "being left holding the bag while new initiatives are undertaken" means they are/were indispensable in regards to specific tasks/processes/skills or knowledge.
Personally I feel being indispensable can also be seen as being able to be thrown at (nearly) any problem and finding a solution. Catching the ball and creating the basis for a stable project for others to take over/maintain. I am working at an agency and more often than not there is a first small initiative at a client where we just do not know what is expected/needed in terms of skills and in what direction this initiative might go/grow.
So we often throw two people at the "problem". One more senior "jack of all trades" kind of person that can understand a lot of problems and knows how far they themselves can work towards a solution (and when to call in the subject matter experts). And one more junior person to support and learn by swimming in cold water together with said "senior" (can actually - depending on the problem be a junior/intermediate themselves - it depends).
These "jack of all trades" persons, thinking on their feet, being able to improvise and get things done, able to understand and dig into problems ans find solutions - these kinds of persons are indispensable - but they don't get stuck in one specific problem/project.
The processes around them are built in a way so that we free them for the next thing to come our way. And we do everything we can to create new people of that kind.
I'm not really familiar with the military context, but it's almost how I envision an advance/special forces unit operating in front of the actual lines and first creating a beachhead that the regular troops can then build on and bring their strengths to bear.
These types of individuals are indispensable - but ideally not each of the individuals on their own.
Re: On Being Indispensable
#43The great swindle that capitalist ideology has pulled is simultaneously convincing workers that 1) they are completely dispensable ('we can replace you'), but 2) that they are also completely indispensable ('we need you'). The former keeps the worker scared that they can be fired at any second, the latter makes the worker feel guilty about quiting (or not answering their phone at 6am on a Sunday). The amazing thing i…
What successful organizations have you built following your ideology?
Re: On Being Indispensable
#44We are not indispensable even to human relationships we assume we would be (forever and ever), how come we consider ourselves indispensable to legal entities like companies?
This was a rhetorical question, i have done that mistake in both occasions. In the case of companies, it isn’t even worth it.
Re: On Being Indispensable
#45In an age where loyalty between employer and employee is long in rear window (if it wasn't just a useful fable from the get-go), all you are left with are the grim permutations of game theory, all wary glances and knife edges barely concealed. Being indispensable is the closest thing you have to security, and as for "stopping learning," well, most companies want you to do that in your off-time, anyway. Throwing that…
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…
Maybe companies need some kind of "Chaos Monkey" system [0] in place for regular employees. Not in "terminating" random employee's contracts, but a culture were regular, maybe even some kind of random transferals onto other projects, or onto internal work regularly happens.
Everybody knows this and everybody should be prepared to a situation that tomorrow they are not working on the same problem they work on today. How would they structure work? How would they share knowledge? What can the organization to to ensure there always are fallbacks to everybody? At least fallbacks that if not perform at 100% but still on 80 - 90%.
Sadly in my org this would not work of the get go, as we often have personal access tokens to our clients' systems. This is sometimes even a contractual obligation as for specific clients we need to be vetted. But even in these cases we could be reassigned/reshuffled towards a slightly different proposition or at least be reassigned to an internal topic for a few days - just like we would not be able to work if we fell ill.
[0]: https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/Chaos-Monkey
Re: On Being Indispensable
#46The neediness of Sales folks is relatable. I worked at a company where Sales thought "@channel" was a person they should ping as often as possible. 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.
I treat the awfulness of Confluence's search as a feature. It forces me to organize and cross-reference documentation.
Interesting take on it. I like it.
But sadly this solves it for the people relying on your documentation. Not for you if you rely on anyone else's documentation if they don't act accordingly.
Re: On Being Indispensable
#47This is why teams should run people game days to test their resiliency to organizational outages. Unavailability: force team members to completely disconnect for a day. Consistency: if a team member ask a question about a process that should be documented in a runbook/TSG, instruct them to sometimes answer it incorrectly. Latency: delay responses to email/IM questions about live-site processes by 24 hours.
Isnt this called paid time off.
Yes in part. But I like the more random aspect to it as well as the additional dimensions.
It trains people to not rely on @xxxx in slack (or any other tool for comm). It trains people to write better documentation as they will receive unhappy messages from coworkers if it wasn't clear. And it trains people to RTFM first.
At least - there is a chance it can do all of this.
Re: On Being Indispensable
#48In any job; you are not indispensible. You may think so, or others may tell you so. But you are not. You can easily be replaced. It is just a question of cost.
And while it is fun to fantasize about snarky comebacks. Don't do it.
In ten years time, no one will remember what sort of professional contribution you made. But they will remember whether you were nice or not.
Be nice.
Re: On Being Indispensable
#49I can relate to some of this because I like to understand how things work, like the article author said about himself.
At every job I get hit up with questions because I put in the time to figure things out. I often get annoyed if the other person hasn't done their homework before coming to me, and that comes through in my communication. Because of that, I have a reputation as someone who is "prickly" and thus someone to contact as a last resort.
Quite frankly, I like it that way. I'm still helpful to coworkers, but not so helpful that they'll ask me before finding other ways to get their question answered.
Re: On Being Indispensable
#50> I was a sentient wiki Busted up at this point. But seriously, this is me, though to a lesser degree (this guy sounds much awesomer then me). 10 years ago, I exited a shrinking technology community. I loved it, but the signs were on the wall. I knew I’d be one of the last ones to turn out the lights. I was just past 41. The prospect of looking for work at 50+ with guru expertise in a Cobol like technology terrified…
To me stuff like this sounds lovely. But sadly I am neither proficient enough to be anywhere near the level of what you need as a "help Travis" person.
I am my own kind of JOAT (jack of all trades) thing. I do mostly data work. Mostly web stuff. Nowadays a lot of strategy, architecture but also still implementation, JS work, python, ETL. Currently building an internal system next to client work for our team to have a play ground. So setting up a fake online shop with fake traffic (selenium) so that the web analysts can try out new tools with somewhat realistic levels of traffic and see if these tools might be something that helps clients solve their problems.
I love the fact that I have colleagues who do parts of that stuff and from whom I can still learn a lot. And I like the diversity of it.
But I agree - regarding the technologies I use there is a longing for "the time to get really good at any of them".