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On Being Indispensable

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Re: On Being Indispensable

#101

Post by krisoft »

alichapman wrote: post #82
wanderingmind wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The passenger count is so heavily influenced by factors outside of the bus driver’s influence that this example doesn’t make sense.

Passengers don’t abandon bus routes because the bus driver didn’t smile at them. They abandon routes when the schedule is inconvenient, there are better alternatives to the bus, the fare is too high etc etc. None of these are in the control of the bus driver.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#102

Post by bigpeopleareold »

at_a_remove wrote: post #19
swayvil wrote: post #6

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?

That's what offends me about this piece, really. And on top of it, Agile, which has always had the whiff of "Taylorism, but from the inside " about it. Always sprinting (huff huff huff); attention atomized by checking texts, emails, phones, voicemail, and of course iterating over an ever-increasing number of Slack channels (or Teams); everything in these bitty increments of moving the assembly line along. And this ha…

Agile might work for someone else, but I never saw it work. I saw this trying to be applied, amongst other methodologies, but the real sticking factor is whether a group of people feel like they are solving actual issues in the end. "Agile" or any methodology was a bit make-work, to fill a role that we can report on the specific progress of small things. At least for me, seeing people learning to handle issues, get through real features needed without the minute formalities has made them, and myself, more engaged in what I do. Being practical in the end gets you farther than having faith in a strict process.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#103

Post by blitzar »

robin_reala wrote: post #77
lliamander wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who work in finance are often required to take a two-week vacation every year. It's a good "bus" test and also a good way to find fraud.

Genuinely the most weirded out I feel by the US is holiday culture. If a report took just two weeks I’d be asking them if they were sure they didn’t want a proper three week holiday (and I’m legally obliged to OK a four-week stretch over summer if the employee has the days available to take).

Finance is a mandatory continuous 2 week holiday with no access to company facilities or systems every year.

Plus all the other holidays. Sadly for some mostly junior US employees the 10 days for compliance leave left few other holidays - for the rest of the world, you still have 20 more days to use.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#104

Post by wildmanx »

tokamak-teapot wrote: post #97
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 negati…

If everybody around is relatively incompetent, then the superstar at the center can't fix that. The overall result that the org produces is based on everybody and eventually "regresses to the mean" of what everybody contributes. Management and also the superstar need to accept that.

I write "relative" because it's a matter of perspective. Maybe from the superstars perfectionist perspective, the others are incompetent, but from the outside they are "good enough". Or maybe they are not, but the point is that there is a mismatch and the superstar needs to either accept that or leave. The third alternative, trying to lift things to the superstars (real or perceived) standard by "I'll just do it myself" is not sustainable and results in situations as in the discussed article.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#105

Post by shapefrog »

Aeolun wrote: post #98
shapefrog wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That there is a driven go getter (although not featured in the employee handbook).

The worker on sabatical is just a lazy bum who cant be bothered to go to work (or an hard working inspirational visionary C suite executive).

Re: On Being Indispensable

#106

Post by dragonwriter »

bigpeopleareold wrote: post #102
at_a_remove wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what offends me about this piece, really. And on top of it, Agile, which has always had the whiff of "Taylorism, but from the inside " about it. Always sprinting (huff huff huff); attention atomized by checking texts, emails, phones, voicemail, and of course iterating over an ever-increasing number of Slack channels (or Teams); everything in these bitty increments of moving the assembly line along. And this ha…

Agile might work for someone else, but I never saw it work. I saw this trying to be applied, amongst other methodologies, but the real sticking factor is whether a group of people feel like they are solving actual issues in the end. "Agile" or any methodology was a bit make-work, to fill a role that we can report on the specific progress of small things. At least for me, seeing people learning to handle issues, get t…

> "Agile" or any methodology was a bit make-work, to fill a role that we can report on the specific progress of small things.

Agile isn't a methodology, and most methodologies described as Agile eschew formal minutiae.

The problem is, of course, that methodologies, of whatever origin, are, in practice, subject to top-down, non-Agile modification to suit the taste of managers who thrive of formalized minutiae, and, also, the starting point of methodologies for many shops isn't the original description by Agile practitioners who developed them while delivering superlative value but customized versions crafted by and marketed alongside consultants whose jobs are largely telling command-and-control-oriented managers what they want to hear.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#107

Post by iamacyborg »

mtsr wrote: post #79
wanderingmind wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What a nihilistic view. Not every aspect that’s part of your job needs to be included in your variable compensation in order to be done, does it?

They’re employed to do a specific job, if they’re not rewarded for bringing the company more money, why should they care?

Re: On Being Indispensable

#108

Post by ihateolives »

Aeolun wrote: post #100
ihateolives wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He was a great boss indeed. We didn't click on personal level, but he was good leader and I respect him even more because he didn't need to be buddies with people in order to have great work relationship.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#109

Post by lstamour »

at_a_remove wrote: post #38
hinkley wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm not sure that's meant to be taken literally, anymore than I think "If you meet Buddha upon the road, kill him," is an incitement to homicide. 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 y…

Color me a little confused, but I think I kind of would lean toward letting the database person make the decisions about database rather than the titular managers. Haven't we all been through enough "management heard X technology is hot so we are gonna use that" fiascos? Management's job is not to make decisions about databases for the database person, but to communicate about problems and priorities, and so on. Don'…

That assumes the experts are indeed experts and not just saying no to an experienced consultant/contractor that management hired. Though I agree from the perspective that if the system goes down after the consultant leaves, it’s not their problem.

I’ve been around enough to know that these ultimately are political and cultural problems, and you either have to expect change to be slow in these situations or leave to find a different team…

I’ve tried a bit of both, and gotten frustrated, and in the end, the stance I’ve settled on is to be helpful to change people’s minds. It’s hard though. Being persistent and pushy with help will fail. Having the person you’re helping describe a problem or agree something is a problem, that is the first step to helping find a solution.

I guess another way of putting it is management can suggest using technology X but there should be some kind of identifiable problem to solve. There is always the exception though. For example, the problem identified might be that there are too many technologies and X is the new standard. That’s… sometimes the reason and … what can you do? Having been on both sides of the fence here, you never know, X might not be so bad… or you’ll need to fix a ton of bugs.

As long as you stay happy and helpful, you can maybe nudge things in the right direction? For example: X has uptime issues. If X is already adopted, document the known issues for devs or DevOps, or identify consultants for X that can provide training and support. Figure out how to get data into and out of X if you want to refactor later to a different approach and political winds blow that way. Write cheat sheets that can map what you’re using now to Technology X, and what might be unexpected.

Who knows, maybe enough people will have heard or seen your materials on Technology X that they’re not as impressed or share your viewpoint on it. And if you’re really unlucky, you’ll set yourself up to be the cheerleader for technology X. So… there are both risks and benefits to getting too involved in technology shifts/adoption.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#110

Post by wildmanx »

Aeolun wrote: post #95
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.

That's right. That's a problem for management to solve though, not for the guy in the center who could have succeeded all over the place where everybody else keeps failing all the time.

If that's really the case. It could also be the case that there are sometimes just different opinions, and one side of the argument is just more persistent and dominant and "just does it themselves", instead of accepting that a different solution would also have brought the org to a good result. Then that lone superstar gets frustrated (because they think they have to do things themselves), their colleagues get frustrated (because there is that guy that just does things on their own and better be quiet than pick a fight) and it's overall not sustainable for the org. Again, a problem for management to solve.

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