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On Being Indispensable

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Re: On Being Indispensable

#91

Post by nvarsj »

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…

This happened in the first company I worked for. It was a big, well known engineering company, and when things started going south they had to negotiate with the state labor department to do large layoffs, which required giving financial cushions to let go employees. I was a star employee - so while everyone else was being laid off with nice, big compensation packages (like 6-12 months of salary), I was stuck in a company on fire that obviously had no future. I was, in effect, punished for being "indispensable".

Re: On Being Indispensable

#92

Post by jyrkesh »

This is too real for me. I worked as a college hire PM for almost 8 years at $BigTech company on a single product that got re-orged around divisions as it evolved to a mature product that would likely never grow nor disappear. I wasn't there for its inception, but a major threshold point that was enough to give me the context to maintain it with raises every two years in perpetuity.

I just got the hell out back in September. I went from the IT/cloud/DevOps automation space to running the backend for a "make everything easy" web dev -> hosting company. I'm not sure that it's better, but it's different. And it's given me enough perspective to know for sure now that I probably should've gotten out two years ago. Pandemic perspective and all that.

Something something this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1768/

I cited it as I stayed....

Re: On Being Indispensable

#93

Post by ihateolives »

bsdz wrote: post #85

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).

I had an eye-opener when at one of my previous jobs I was on scehduled vacation, but just dropped by in the office to pick up some things I left there. My boss was sitting at his desk, saw me, and instead of giving me a work related chit-chat immediately proceeded to tell me: "What are you doing here? Go away, you're on vacation so go and have some fun and rest, we can handle this. I don't want you to hang around in the office when you should be vacationing instead. Go!"

After that I've always judged all my superiors to according on how they handle situations like that and I've been trying to act the same, respecting the time off of others.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#94

Post by jacobolus »

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…

> refused to let me move for a promotion because I was "indispensable" and "critical to the project".

So would they rather have you quit? If not they should be willing to give you whatever title, pay bump, time off, etc. is necessary to keep you long enough for a replacement solution to be found. Otherwise if you just quit they’re stuck negotiating from a position of weakness to hire you back as a much higher paid contractor, or if you decide to take an extended vacation or work somewhere else they are left high and dry.

If you are truly “indispensable”, that makes you the one with all of the leverage. If they can jerk you around without pushback, then “indispensable” sounds more like a rhetorical device / excuse.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#95

Post by Aeolun »

wildmanx wrote: post #56

The people most common to enter this state are people who don't trust their co-workers to do the right thing and instead get involved so heavily that in the end they are pulling all the strings. You may call them "control freaks". Sometimes branding themselves as "perfectionists". When reading his story it became apparent that that's likely his problem. Unless literally everybody in his org was completely lazy (which…

> It's just the natural result of somebody not letting others do things, and fail and learn on their own on the way.

How is this supposed to work though? You can do it yourself and succeed, or you can allow others to fail. If others are constantly failing where you (feel like you) could have succeeded, that’s it’s own form of exhausting.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#96

Post by bigpeopleareold »

I think this article resonates with me. I am coming from the perspective of being at the same company at least longer than three years.

I had an opinion that being indispensable was a key to _something_ better, but it isn't. It started to be unsatisfying when I saw that I was being asked the same questions, doing the same set of tasks, getting the same requests (got to be on this call about a project I am not involved in because it touches something I know, "can you go on a call with the client with us?", etc. etc.) This was my burnout. My job description is not "account manager", "consultant", or anything that remotely resembles a customer-facing position, nor did I ever want to be. At least for me, this has mostly ended after taking action on it with my boss, but I still have to push back a little bit on things that take away from the focus I have now.

I came to the opinion though, through this, in comparing multiple jobs, that when someone gets trapped into that position, it is a sign of an immature organization. Leadership needs to be constantly aware that if you are in crunch-mode, the organizational debt collects a lot. There needs to be a level of de-personalization around the tasks and projects involved and if it must be personal, people need to go out of their way, with full transparency, on how others helped them.

One role I play is to work with others to understand, improve and discover what we do while making improvements. While we would grow into the position with knowledge of what to do in certain circumstances, its probably important to continue to emphasize that the end-goal is not to create more walking encyclopedias, but those competent to keep things going while pushing forward on new projects and working on new opportunities. For software development management, this has always been to me one of the harder things to do right (and no matter how much "agile" you dump into it, it is very important to create a motivation for a strong team ethic around knowledge.) Just getting through a queue of bugs is a hard thing to do that something as critical as that can get easily ignored.

Many times, I wanted to walk away from where I work now because of this, but the grass isn't greener on the other side. It will never matter what organization you are in. When you open your mouth answering a question with what sounds like an intelligent answer, the next step has to manage the expectation that you are not working on someone else's project and that you are not owning someone else's problem. Being clear on that has helped my mental health a lot when boundaries are in place.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#97

Post by tokamak-teapot »

wildmanx wrote: post #56

The people most common to enter this state are people who don't trust their co-workers to do the right thing and instead get involved so heavily that in the end they are pulling all the strings. You may call them "control freaks". Sometimes branding themselves as "perfectionists". When reading his story it became apparent that that's likely his problem. Unless literally everybody in his org was completely lazy (which…

I would say your assumption here is unkind and itself lazy.

I have often seen this kind of situation and the cause has always been the same: The most senior in the organisation are ridiculously poor at building their org.

They have hired someone who is pretty great at stuff and they got them by accident, for cheap due to some circumstance, and now attempt to grow without realising they got lucky.

They hire net negative contributors and making it more difficult to deliver, not less. They cannot comprehend that there won’t be some magic that turns these people into productive and driven employees without their own growth in skills, attitude, and care in direction. They are likely incapable of such things.

The person or people at the center of this are stuck, yes. They can’t spread their knowledge because others will actively avoid admitting the docs exist, or refuse to ask Google or another employee. They certainly can’t spread their attitude and skills because no-one else cares or has the incentive or ability to skill up.

There is only one eventual route for the capable and driven: leave and go somewhere where there are better people in senior roles.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#98

Post by Aeolun »

shapefrog wrote: post #87
Casteil wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unlike leaving for a competitor and coming back for a 25% higher salary?

Re: On Being Indispensable

#99

Post by pjc50 »

gumby wrote: post #13
bluefirebrand wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "My company would be just fine without me," can mean "my work here is done," and you can ride off into the sunset with a clear conscience It also makes it way easier to take your vacation time. If your employer is harmed by you taking vacation, they will find ways to make you miserable for it.

> If your employer is harmed by you taking vacation, they will find ways to make you miserable for it. Ouch, I know this one well and it almost cost me my marriage.

Your marriage wasn't enhancing shareholder value, citizen.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#100

Post by Aeolun »

ihateolives wrote: post #93
bsdz wrote: post #85

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).

I had an eye-opener when at one of my previous jobs I was on scehduled vacation, but just dropped by in the office to pick up some things I left there. My boss was sitting at his desk, saw me, and instead of giving me a work related chit-chat immediately proceeded to tell me: "What are you doing here? Go away, you're on vacation so go and have some fun and rest, we can handle this. I don't want you to hang around in…

Hah, I had the same. It’s now my mark of a great boss, but unfortunately I haven’t found anyone similar yet.

I’ve now emigrated, but if I ever move back I’d happily work there again.

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