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On Being Indispensable

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Re: On Being Indispensable

#241

Post by hinkley »

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'…

You can’t have a dozen middle tier and front end people at the whims of one backend guy why isn’t interested in ramping someone up to load shed. That was a terrible contract, and at the end I’m sure they went back to the status quo. Him holding the reins of the data and his job while the initiative ramped down and they waited for the next time they got the political will to spend a bunch of money.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#242

Post by hinkley »

sdoering wrote: post #45
hinkley wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something to be said for being indispensible for novel problems, instead of for known problems. Some of the worst behavior I've seen in both myself and others has come when you can hold your company hostage by refusing to do something. Even when you are using it for 'the greater good', that's not a good look and not a great feeling. You shouldn't have to go with the nuclear option to get something done, even…

Maybe companies need some kind of "Chaos Monkey" system [0] in place for regular employees. Not in "terminating" random employee's contracts, but a culture were regular, maybe even some kind of random transferals onto other projects, or onto internal work regularly happens. Everybody knows this and everybody should be prepared to a situation that tomorrow they are not working on the same problem they work on today. H…

You can get a good slice of this by encouraging people to actually use their vacation time.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#243

Post by brianliou91 »

There is a difference between having power and being indispensable.

Power enables you to delegate whereas if you are indispensable but leadership has no idea what you do, you are powerless and stuck.

It's not fair that power is determined subjectively and largely politically, but it's the reality we live in.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#245

Post by mooreds »

matwood wrote: post #207
mooreds wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

What would you say is a good generalization when it comes to work life balance? There's sure a spectrum, from the folks who love to work (or even workaholics) to slackers who don't want to.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#246

Post by jodrellblank »

amelius wrote: post #131
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…

> "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?" They could even make it so that the people who actually take the bus negotiate the time and place. This would be great for events outside the city.

“Imagine if you could hire a bus”?

You can; groups of people hire a mini bus or coach and negotiate where and when it travels all the time for social events, work parties, school trips, etc.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#247

Post by fluxode »

jlund-molfese wrote: post #200
rmah wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US financial industry has almost the exact same contiguous time off requirement for the same reasons.

Can you provide a source or examples? Asking out of ignorance—I've worked in insurance and currently work for a US-based financial services company, but haven't heard of this practice before.

It is typically referred to as YAR (yearly absence requirement)

https://www.newyorkfed.org/banking/circulars/10923.html

Re: On Being Indispensable

#249

Post by cindarin »

jaywalk wrote: post #189
galangalalgol wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is brilliant! In the US it isn't that unusual to find companies that don't even offer 2 weeks vacation in total though.

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.

Oh how I envy the luxurious life you must have had to reach this conclusion

Re: On Being Indispensable

#250

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

There is actually no contradiction there. You want to be indispensable for the position you wish you have, and dispensable for any position you don't wish.

If your interests change, your dispensability should change with it. But this is very hard to achieve, so you get a complex goal of optimizing for many things at the same time.

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