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On Being Indispensable

sofuckingagile.com

201–210 of 296 posts

Re: On Being Indispensable

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Principles are a luxury not afforded the poor masses.

Or even a lot of the middling ones. In the US something like a trillion dollars a year is spent on making people want to buy stuff. Not to mention all the social forces that encourage spending. Relatively few people manage to live far enough beneath their means that they can just quit a job on principle.

I happen to be one of the people who can (and has!) quit a job on principle. But it's very much a luxury good that I work hard to afford. And it's easier for me: no kids, no parents to care for, no mortgage to worry about. I would rather more people quit their jobs on principle (or risked it through efforts like unionization). But I mostly don't blame them if they feel like they can't.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#202
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> A one sentence horror story.

Too true. My favorite quote on this topic is that "work will never love you back". It's easy to get wrapped up in what we are doing (sometimes the less important it is to the world, the more I need to get wrapped up in it to be motivated), but work pales in comparison to:

* a good conversation with a friend

* time outside, contemplating nature and purpose

* a hug from a family member

But we don't treat it like that, unfortunately.

Of course, we all need to eat and I realize I'm speaking from a position of privilege (not worried about where my next meal is coming from).

Once you get to an income of X (where X varies by location, needs, but is definitely a finite number), time is so much more valuable than money.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this "one year of experience 10 times" phrase before. It seems to mean different things in different contexts to different people. Can you explain what it means to you and the implications?

Real world example: I started my second job in 1999 it was for a bill processing/printing company. Companies would send us data files via ftp, we would merge the files and create files in a format used by industrial printers and mail them out. Later on we were one of the early integrators with CheckFree that was the backend for most online bill payment services. I wrote mostly processing programs in VB6, Perl and C++…

Good lessons here on tracking the market, keeping skills up to date, and skating to where the puck is going. I imagine the modernization niche pays pretty well. :)

Re: On Being Indispensable

#204
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.

I actually took 3 months off and completely disconnected. A large portion of my direct team churned while I was off, a long time engineer took his own life, and I came back to the same issues but magnified.

Overall, it's not unreasonable to assume I'm a control freak and couldn't let projects go. However I'm a big proponent of letting fires burn and I delegate to no end. My particular type of stuck was exasperated by a corporate culture that has sales quotas pulled out of the air and implementation that was tracking time down to the minute because 90% had to be billable. In that culture there's no incentive or ability for individuals to learn.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#205
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…

"You can't be promoted if you can't be replaced."

Re: On Being Indispensable

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. Outside of the lowest-level hourly positions, you're not going to find any US company that doesn't offer at least two weeks vacation.

The federal government gives 0.5 days leave per every 2 weeks worked. Note that that implies 0.5*(52/2) = 13 days possible to accrue in a year. I think showing the feds do it should sway you pretty far away from your above position. If not, I'm curious what evidence could be provided that would.

The 13 days off (2 weeks and 3 days, you don't spend it on weekends) is just the first 3 years. For years 3-15 you get 4 weeks (20 days) per year. After that you get 26 days/year. They also get 13 days of sick leave per year with no max accrual. Regular leave maxes at 30 days accrued, you have to have 30 days or less at the end of the calendar year, anything beyond that is lost (use it or lose it). And now they get 11 federal holidays, sometimes more depending on who is president and when Christmas Eve and Christmas fall. It's not uncommon for late-career (15+ years) folks to have max accrued leave every year, which means they can potentially take 56 days + 11 holidays off the next year if they want, sums up to 13 weeks depending on how they use the leave. Of course, you can only do that about every 2-4 years. 2 years if you spend one year without using any leave, which would be pretty miserable. If you're smart about that 26 days, it becomes 6 weeks off instead of just 5 by pairing it with holidays.

They can also earn "credit hours", up to 24 hours of accrued time off by working ahead (an extra hour here and there, unpaid but becomes leave) and comp time (same, but no technical limit, becomes overtime pay if unused).

And there's now 12 weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave, which is better than most companies in the US.

Of course, the pay is lower which is why it's harder to keep technical talent. And as you move up the GS ranks it's a lot like moving up the officer ranks in the military, a shift from technical (at the lower levels) to managerial/leadership (at the higher levels). Which means there are effective caps on people who want to remain purely (or more purely) technical and avoid supervisory roles (outside of, perhaps, team or project leadership positions).

Re: On Being Indispensable

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> A one sentence horror story. Too true. My favorite quote on this topic is that "work will never love you back". It's easy to get wrapped up in what we are doing (sometimes the less important it is to the world, the more I need to get wrapped up in it to be motivated), but work pales in comparison to: * a good conversation with a friend * time outside, contemplating nature and purpose * a hug from a family member Bu…

> but work pales in comparison to:

I just want to note that this is a poor generalization. Much like how people wonder how I have the discipline to get up early and workout, it's because I enjoy it. I also enjoy my job the vast majority of the time, and I suspect many others do also. My dad always comments "I'm amazed you get paid to play on the computer all day...", "Me too dad, me too".

Re: On Being Indispensable

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real world example: I started my second job in 1999 it was for a bill processing/printing company. Companies would send us data files via ftp, we would merge the files and create files in a format used by industrial printers and mail them out. Later on we were one of the early integrators with CheckFree that was the backend for most online bill payment services. I wrote mostly processing programs in VB6, Perl and C++…

Good lessons here on tracking the market, keeping skills up to date, and skating to where the puck is going. I imagine the modernization niche pays pretty well. :)

Ironically, “application modernization” seems to be the worse paying cloud specialty in the industry. At most consulting companies, “implementations” pays the least and is outsourced to cheaper labor and junior consultants.

I work at the one company that pays decently well for AWS + enterprise dev + consulting. It’s not hard to guess which one it is..

Re: On Being Indispensable

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government gives 0.5 days leave per every 2 weeks worked. Note that that implies 0.5*(52/2) = 13 days possible to accrue in a year. I think showing the feds do it should sway you pretty far away from your above position. If not, I'm curious what evidence could be provided that would.

The 13 days off (2 weeks and 3 days, you don't spend it on weekends) is just the first 3 years. For years 3-15 you get 4 weeks (20 days) per year. After that you get 26 days/year. They also get 13 days of sick leave per year with no max accrual. Regular leave maxes at 30 days accrued, you have to have 30 days or less at the end of the calendar year, anything beyond that is lost (use it or lose it). And now they get 1…

Using the federal gov. as an example of the lack of vacation was pretty funny when they tend to have very generous standard days off, and move up accrual rates pretty quickly.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#210
post #89

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 i…

> 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

The general principle here is that we teach people how to treat us. If we're always bending over backward to help someone without expecting them to put in the effort themselves then we're teaching them it's OK to behave that way.

Just asking "What have you tried already?" teaches others that they're not allowed to put in zero effort. Saying, "No, I won't implement that feature." teaches others that you're not a pushover.

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