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On Being Indispensable

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Re: On Being Indispensable

#111

Post by kjuulh »

willbudd wrote: post #75
kjuulh wrote: post #70

This was me, given a variety of factors I ended up being lead on a big project right out of uni. We did end up shipping the product, in a state that could be discussed how well it went, but what do you expect from a fresh graduate. On one end I learned a ton, and probably the most important, how to deal with responsibility and pressure. But at the same time I can really see myself in this article, I ended up choosing…

> I could have made so much more money if I stayed Are you sure that isn't a bit of a "glass is half empty" perspective? There's no upper limit to how much money you can make by choosing your own path. (If, hypothetically speaking, you were inclined to pursue big $€¥£).

Definitely, my prioritized as mentioned in my post; lied with my well-being, and not just getting a pay raise, otherwise I would've stayed. It could be argued that I could get a raise somewhere else, and I also have gotten that, but not the amount I would've gotten if I stayed. I am still quite early in my career, and I am already in the upper bounds of what I can make as an employee given the length of my career (99th percentile). And when finding a new job, even when I've gotten recommendations been difficult for them to even match my old salary, simply because I haven't been out of university that long, but command a much higher salary than normal.

Would you as a product owner / manager hire an engineer that has been out of university for two years with a bachelors, given that person says he wants a senior/lead engineer salary? Honestly, from my experience even when I've gotten recommendations, talked about previous projects, they still don't want to shell out what I cost.

The plan is definitely to keep pursuing new experiences and at some point either begin consulting or start a startup. But for now I want to experience a few different companies. I also want a few projects under my belt before I begin doing that. That said I am already in the 99th percentile in my country given my length of career, so I have nothing to complain about, but I am definitely gonna keep pushing.

And honestly right now my priority is not making the big bucks, I could pursue that, but I'd much rather work on awesome projects than slave away at some legacy code for the maximum amount of money.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#112

Post by steve_gh »

It's called the Technical Ghetto.

The basic problem is technical folks who are too good at being technical to be allowed to do any management or less technical stuff.

I've seen it time and time again in my career. I've discussed it at length with colleagues and peers. I've seen very few people escape it. Only once have I seen someone escape it without moving jobs (new company, not in-company). And that one time was due to a succession crisis which meant the person in question had to be promoted into a more senior management role.

The absolute classic was a guy I worked with at a major international telco. He was promoted into country CEO role. 3 months later and he was moved to be CTO in another country because they couldn't find anyone else competent to take the CTO role during a major rollout. He called me a couple of years later - he is now CEO of his own SAAS business, and very successful.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#113

Post by fxtentacle »

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 sounds to me like an invitation to negotiate ;)

Option A) You truly are indispensable and critical to the project, and soon you're going to be their best-paid employee.

Option B) They will now find ways to make you dispensable. And then you'll qualify for that promotion.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#114

Post by pferde »

jatins wrote: post #21

The 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.

Confluence search is alright. The problem with Confluence is the undisciplined people who mess up their spaces to the point where the search comes up with too many mostly duplicate results, where you can't be sure which one is the latest valid version.

At my job, we use Confluence extensively, with dozens if not hundreds of spaces, and in some spaces, searching for something is a delight, while in others it is impossible to find anything without already knowing their byzantine structure.

Usually, the "good" spaces are ones with one or three "custodians" who mercilessly impose a sane structure upon the space. The "bad" spaces are always those where dozens of people create articles and sections as they see fit, without any coordination.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#115

Post by devinnsomnath »

Hotel Dev Inn, a luxury hotel in Somnath with sea view is well known as a great destination for the tourists as well as devotees visiting Somnath and seeking for a comfortable accommodation with a sense of luxuriousness!!

Re: On Being Indispensable

#116

Post by FeepingCreature »

kqr wrote: post #59
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…

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…

Ah, this must be why bus drivers are commonly paid in company shares. Incentive alignment! Makes sense.

Wait, they're not? So why should they care, when their bosses don't care even enough to set up a direct reward to bus performance and some way for them to have agency over that reward?

Though it would be cool if there was a bus service that had direct, fine-grained association between curteous behavior and reward in the form of immediate payment and future business, possibly mediated via ratings - I was making a joking reference to Uber here, but "Uber for busses" is genuinely something that I want to exist. Ie. not "Uber Bus", but the standard Uber model of engaging a driver directly, only this time applied to longer timespans to allow better schedule coordination. For instance, some way to say "Hey, I need a bus from X to Y some time between 6 and 7 every workday for the next six months, which time and pickup location is cheapest?" would allow for some pretty cool optimizations in routing. Possibly combined with a Kickstarter-like model where a bunch of people can express prospective interest.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#117

Post by scarface74 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #113
gautamdivgi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sounds to me like an invitation to negotiate ;) Option A) You truly are indispensable and critical to the project, and soon you're going to be their best-paid employee. Option B) They will now find ways to make you dispensable. And then you'll qualify for that promotion.

It’s not about “I’m indispensable pay me more”. It’s about “I don’t want to have 1 year of experience 10 times”. I always want to have the optionality to change jobs . Things change. Culture changes.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#118

Post by scarface74 »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #116
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…

Ah, this must be why bus drivers are commonly paid in company shares. Incentive alignment! Makes sense. Wait, they're not? So why should they care, when their bosses don't care even enough to set up a direct reward to bus performance and some way for them to have agency over that reward? Though it would be cool if there was a bus service that had direct, fine-grained association between curteous behavior and reward i…

If I’m working for a private company. Guess how much I care about “equity” that will statistically be meaningless?

On the other hand, I did implementations as a Senior Develop/de facto “cloud architect” that moved the needle meaningfully at a company with $5 million in revenue. Those same types of implementations happen multiple times daily at a company worth over $1 trillion. Nothing I’m going to ever do will ever have a meaningful affect on the stock price of the company I work at now.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#119

Post by FeepingCreature »

scarface74 wrote: post #118
FeepingCreature wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, this must be why bus drivers are commonly paid in company shares. Incentive alignment! Makes sense. Wait, they're not? So why should they care, when their bosses don't care even enough to set up a direct reward to bus performance and some way for them to have agency over that reward? Though it would be cool if there was a bus service that had direct, fine-grained association between curteous behavior and reward i…

If I’m working for a private company. Guess how much I care about “equity” that will statistically be meaningless? On the other hand, I did implementations as a Senior Develop/de facto “cloud architect” that moved the needle meaningfully at a company with $5 million in revenue. Those same types of implementations happen multiple times daily at a company worth over $1 trillion. Nothing I’m going to ever do will ever h…

Kind of sounds like the company share price is too coarse-grained. That sort of thing might work better if the company was split into separately traded sub-units, of which the parent company owns some controlling fraction of voting shares. Admittedly the bureaucratic overhead starts being awkward.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#120

Post by scarface74 »

ip26 wrote: post #28
ivraatiems wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Presumably the goal is to be nominally replaceable, but just so all-around awesome they’d be sore to lose you. Easy, right?

I worked at 3 companies between 2014-2020. My goal going in was to solve the set of problems I was hired to solve by the then new manager and “put myself out of job”.

Today working in a consulting department, I refuse to take on any work that may look like “staff augmentation”. I just do project based implementations with a definition of done and set aside time for training the customer.

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