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On Being Indispensable

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Re: On Being Indispensable

#81

Post by plutonorm »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #22
hinkley wrote: post #10

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…

Being indispensable to a team or a manager in a large company can actually be self-destructive to your career. I realized this the hard way a long time ago when my managers refused to let me move for a promotion because I was "indispensable" and "critical to the project". I've always made it a point to know who my back-ups are and have my supervisors assign them formally. In short, make it a point to share knowledge…

That would be an instant resignation as a matter of principle for me.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#82

Post by alichapman »

wanderingmind wrote: post #65
kqr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deming sometimes used bus drivers as an example. Some of them might think it's not their job to smile and be nice to passengers. They're hired to drive the bus, and perhaps help out in emergencies, but not much beyond that. However, being nice to passengers (performing "caring labour" as Graeber would have put it) increases the chances that people choose the bus over e.g. the metro or something else. Deming concluded…

If the bus drivers were paid by the number of people who take the bus sure, but when are paid by the travel route distance, they have no obligation to do what they are not paid to do.

Yes but if the number of people on the bus dropped to zero do you think their employers would keep running the route?

Re: On Being Indispensable

#83

Post by noisy_boy »

Way too much specific knowledge about code/processes doesn't translate well across firms. If you view being indispensable as a formula for job security, rather than doing that for code/processes, do it for business knowledge. You'll still be considered very valuable, you'll get a lot more exposure/recognition to/from the decision makers, your deep knowledge will translate across firms and you'll be considered more valuable the older you get which, instead of having to deal with ageism, will open up more avenues like switching to being an expert consultant while having the freedom to be choosy about the kind of projects you do.

Of course, this hinges on the requirement that you actually care/like knowing about the business side of things and are willing to spend the time/effort towards learning (which isn't super common among techies). Sometimes, the opportunity simply isn't there or not encouraged.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#84

Post by chii »

noisy_boy wrote: post #83

Way too much specific knowledge about code/processes doesn't translate well across firms. If you view being indispensable as a formula for job security, rather than doing that for code/processes, do it for business knowledge. You'll still be considered very valuable, you'll get a lot more exposure/recognition to/from the decision makers, your deep knowledge will translate across firms and you'll be considered more va…

and this job you describe is the CEO (or CTO, or whatever CxO level people).

It is indeed indispensable - a firm shows a poor signal if they have to switch CEOs, or one gets fired, or resigns without a good replacement.

The problem is that there's usually only 1 CEO to a firm, and not everybody can get to that level.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#85

Post by bsdz »

Many banks, and perhaps other organisations, check for indispensability by means of a mandatory vacation policy. If one is indispensable then it should become apparent when they are forced not to work, log-in or reply to emails for this short period. This policy might also pick up other issues such as some types of fraud that might require constant attention (e.g. hiding evidence as it appears).

Re: On Being Indispensable

#86

Post by willcipriano »

hobs wrote: post #55
paxys wrote: post #27

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…

The indispensable head of QA at my company died of a heart attack after working 100 hour weeks for years, they did not replace him.

A one sentence horror story. How much of his life was missed for things the company could do without?

Re: On Being Indispensable

#87

Post by shapefrog »

Casteil wrote: post #67
jedberg wrote: post #20

This is exactly why companies offer sabbaticals. It forces you to train people up on your five years of knowledge before you leave for 10 weeks. OP could have just taken a long vacation.

Maybe... but not all companies offer sabbaticals / extended leaves of absence with a way to come back.

In my experience companies offer may offer sabbaticals, HR may promote them, the documentation may be shiny; but it is career suicide for anoyone who hasnt already made it to the top.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#88

Post by buro9 »

"It depends".

Like so many things there's no hard and fast rule here. Sometimes you are best being dispensable, and sometimes it's best being indispensable.

If you're a contractor and like the work... be indispensable as it will give you more power over your rates.

If you're 12-18 months from an IPO... be indispensable as it will ensure the golden handcuff stock option / RSU shower that touches the top ~10% of engineering is extremely favourable to you.

But otherwise, there's nearly always more value to you in being someone who is dispensable. You get more freedom and support to move roles, try different things, less lock-in to a specific team, role or part of an org. Your skills are likely more transferable to other places, etc.

"It depends" is nearly always the dull answer, and the parameters for that are always specific to your circumstances.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#89

Post by dusted »

Early on, I did some infrastructure thing that caused me to become indispensable. My motivation for doing that was not to become indispensable, but to have some infrastructure that allowed me to a. make my own life easier, b. make others lives easier and c. show my new org that I was not entirely useless. After a while, I was moving on, I didn't want to maintain this thing anymore, it clearly did what I set out for it to do, and I grew less accommodating and started pushing back when people wanted more features.

I was able to hand it off to "nobody in particular" and explain that yes, I build the thing to solve X and it does that fine, if it can incidentally be used to also solve Y, it's great but not something I want to know about. By slowly being more resistant to changing the thing FOR people, telling them to try to do it themselves, and less inclined to answer questions, and more inclined to ask them what they tried and suggest what they may investigate next to find an answer, people have stopped asking so often, and I no longer consider myself indispensable. I know they will have a hard time doing some changes if I'm not around, but not impossible, and if one day I leave, enough other people have touched the stuff that, even if it "was mine" it's now "ours".

The strategic minus for me is of course that I'm not indispensable, but on the positive side, I can now actually do my job instead of babysitting my skunk-works projects.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#90

Post by c0l0 »

paxys wrote: post #27

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…

According to my ~15 years of work experience in IT/the tech sector, this ought to be pretty accurate.
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