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On Being Indispensable

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Re: On Being Indispensable

#71

Post by Casteil »

smokey_circles wrote: post #35

Alternate title: How it took OP years to realise their teammates and colleagues deserve agency. No such thing as "indispensable". Very few companies and projects die to a singular departure, you're just not that special kiddo. What's actually happened here is a selfish desire to know things without sharing them. If you learn something new, share it somewhere. "People came to ask the Oracle questions only the Oracle c…

You make a pretty grand assumption here - that OP had time/capacity in all the madness to be able to document things and simply opted not to.

You also gloss over the fact that he addressed this in the article (things were documented, people just kept coming to him anyway).

Re: On Being Indispensable

#72

Post by rkagerer »

I run my own consulting business and have fallen into this trap, even with all the right efforts to document, cross-train and build out expertise.

I've learned billing hourly and gradually nudging up the rate helps incentivize clients to backfill faster.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#73

Post by [deleted] »

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'…

[deleted]

Re: On Being Indispensable

#74

Post by pcthrowaway »

paxys wrote: post #27

The first thing to remember is – no one is indispensable. If you get hit by a bus tomorrow the company will go on without you. People may have a bit of trouble at first, but new processes will develop and new people will gain expertise just as you have now. Heck the company might be better off in the long run without knowledge bottlenecks. Second, being indispensable doesn't do a whole lot for job security. If the co…

There are people who are indispensable to the point that entire products, teams, or companies rely on them (for better or worse). The company very well may not go on running if they are hit by a bus. At the very least a product (or products) may be cut and teams made vestigial or laid off.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#75

Post by willbudd »

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 $€¥£).

Re: On Being Indispensable

#76

Post by ge96 »

Recently as the only dev there was a bug/outage and I was asleep. I dream of having more than one me so I can one day sleep whenever. We don't have money so yeah... Just me.

I'm working on better back testing (some dep version went out and it broke it our stuff).

Re: On Being Indispensable

#77

Post by robin_reala »

lliamander wrote: post #57
sdoering wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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).

Re: On Being Indispensable

#78

Post by nicolas_t »

In the past, I became indispensable for my employers, like the OP I had been there for a long time, had made a significant number of important technical decisions and was the go to person for any questions. On the positive side, it served me well when negotiating since everyone knew that I couldn't just walk away on the other hand, I got severely burned out but couldn't just stop since I felt some responsibility to everyone and it took quite a while to do everything to make myself not indispensable.

Re: On Being Indispensable

#79

Post by mtsr »

wanderingmind wrote: post #65
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…

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?
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