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On Being Indispensable

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Re: On Being Indispensable

#151

Post by gnz11 »

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…

After about 20 or so years now, one of the main things I've learned is that you aren't as indispensable as you think you are. You might think the company will go under or otherwise degrade when you leave, but that never happens. The company will trudge along without you. That being said though, if you do believe yourself to be "indispensable" to a degree in which the burden of you leaving is large, then by all means, use that to your advantage in obtaining raises/promotions/etc.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#152

Post by thrawy876 »

I made myself indispensable because I did not trust the company (a small-ish games company). In the end I was left holding their bag while the rest of the company went off todo other things where the grass was greener.

In the end, I left and the lucrative project I was involved with crashed and burned…they didn’t seem to care. It was very strange. The company has gone on just fine without me, though every project they have started has met a similar fate. It was a good move to leave as the company doesn’t care about making product but rather fund raising. But hey, I got paid.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#153

Post by xondono »

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 think this isn’t justified. There’s people who are control freaks, but it’s not necessarily OPs case.

In a product I delivered (I do hardware design), I helped the “firmware team” (one guy at that point) to get started because I was more experienced, and stuck helping with some small modules to get things ready for demos and things of that nature.

Later the team expanded, so I let go of firmware development and went back to my work, and the code slowly changed to the point that I wasn’t really aware of what the device did in scenario X, much less how it did that.

I still was the go-to guy when it came to questions about the device behavior for months, even if all my replies where “I have no idea, ask this people”.

All it takes is for someone to say “that guy has been working on this since the beginning”, and a lot of questions will find your inbox when others are unsure about the answer.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#154

Post by ajsnigrutin »

gnz11 wrote: post #151
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…

After about 20 or so years now, one of the main things I've learned is that you aren't as indispensable as you think you are. You might think the company will go under or otherwise degrade when you leave, but that never happens. The company will trudge along without you. That being said though, if you do believe yourself to be "indispensable" to a degree in which the burden of you leaving is large, then by all means,…

Or you are indespensible, and the company could go under, but you can charge them huge afternoon-consulting fees while working a new, better day-job elsewhere.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#155

Post by dagw »

Another risk that I have seen play out more than once at large corporations is that people who are "indispensable" and tied heavily to a particular project will often get laid off rather than moved to new roles when that project is cancelled.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#156

Post by xondono »

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.

> The neediness of Sales folks is relatable.

This is a symptom of bad communication.

I faced some of these issues in a company, and the best solution we found was creating a massive “FAQ” single page where (browser) search could get you what you wanted, and a firm policy that any question asked should end with a modification to the document.

All questions had to include the search terms used to find the answer, and if it was a “failure to find”, those search terms would be included in the “related tags” section of the question for next time.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#157

Post by codingdave »

I lived the same life as described - ran with one product for a decade, from initial thought to acquisition, and was the center of knowledge. I had a different tactic to get out of it - documentation. Not just written, but I made a series of videos to take someone from having never heard about the problem space all the way up to how we solved, why we made our choices, how the current system works, and what our long-term vision is both for features as well as lessons learned.

When we finally did get a new acquisition and a new product leader came in, I was told that those videos made the onboarding to the product so easy. No meetings, no schedules, no weeks of questions... just sit down and watch and they were up to speed enough to engage with the product. I still had detailed knowledge they needed to ask about, but I was not "indispensable".

Re: On Being Indispensable

#158

Post by codingdave »

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.

Yes, sometimes helping people learn means letting them make mistakes. Watching someone do something slowly and poorly can test your patience. But they'll be faster and better the next time. Have patience for them to learn, while being available to guide them when needed or when their mistakes would impact the customer.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#159

Post by JimBlackwood »

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…

How would you go about learning the business side? Coming from a more business oriented team, it’s something I definitely struggle with.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#160

Post by baobabKoodaa »

pferde wrote: post #145
jatins wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... knowing their byzantine structure. If you need to know the structure to search, IMO the search experience is broken. Most searchers want to type topic related words and expect useful results.

Yes, but that's because the space contains so many duplicate or almost duplicate articles that search results have no chance of being good. I see the problem in the searched content, not in the search engine itself.

The internet also contains "so mamy duplicate or almost duplicate" articles, and yet Google can provide a useful search for Internet articles. You're telling me it's somehow impossible to achieve the same thing for a company's intra - even though it has several orders of magnitude fewer articles to index?

One quick and easy way to improve Confluence's search would be to rank often-visited articles higher than rarely-visited articles.

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