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One of the best professional pieces of advice I've ever read said something like "Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?". It made me aware that ofte
by ergothus 10y ago
One of the best professional pieces of advice I've ever read said something like "Think you're indispensable? Do they know that?". It made me aware that often the people making the hiring/firing decisions aren't actually aware of my day-to-day. Rather, they know only the summary info. Those kudos to fellow employees and in-house "awards" that I'd been ignoring? Those are documentation that someone is worthwhile, and I had none. If I were fired that day, I'd have had precious little "proof" that it was a mistake. (and of course, the point isn't to "prove" it's a mistake, it's to make sure they know not to in the first place).
Now, when I learned that advice I was working for virginia state govt, where I didn't have technically competent and aware management like I do now in Seattle tech companies, but there is still an important kernel in the message: We tend to judge our performance relative to the difficulty of the tasks in front of us. Often, our performance will be judged my management using different criteria. It's a good idea to be aware of how you look from the outside.
...which is why I'd not want to work in the Netflix system. It's not whether I'm a good performer, it's whether THEY THINK I'm a good performer. Ideally these are related, and outside of a Netflix-like environment I might have confidence that my manager would let me know in advance of action if there was a discrepancy. While I'm sure Netflix would claim the same, I doubt McCord was expecting the axe to fall...
- olalonde 10y ago> It's not whether I'm a good performer, it's whether THEY THINK I'm a good performer. To play the devil's advocate, isn't that true of any employer (that wants good performers)? Do you believe Netflix's system is too subjective?
- kelvin0 10y agoThe important thing to gather from 'They think I'm a good performer' is to first try and understand your management. For example, in a coding shop where most employees are Software engineers (and also yours bosses) you have a higher probability that your yardstick and your bosses will be fairly close. However, having non-technical bosses is a bigger challenge, thus the need for you to demonstrate your 'worth' be means other than 'Yeah I just refactored FOO kernel code in BAR module and have 80% test coverage'.
- ergothus 10y agoNot any more subjective than elsewhere (which is why this was good advice in the first place). No, the difference is in the speed of action. Other workplaces have some realization that hiring is hard, and thus if they have a problem with me they'll first try to see if we can work it out. If I'm actually performing well, it should be doable to make that obvious. Seems like Netflix would be faster on the "fire" button. Plus, knowing this (or thinking it, if it was untrue), means I'd work with the knowledge that I need to constantly ensure they understand my value, surrounded by others doing the same. Not exactly stack ranking, but it sounds unappealing.
- rpgmaker 10y ago> While I'm sure Netflix would claim the same, I doubt McCord was expecting the axe to fall... Exactly. How likely is Hastings to adopt that standard if he knew that it would apply to him too?
- sib 10y agoSince Reed owns a very small share of Netflix (less than 5%), the Board could very well do that if they felt he wasn't performing. He doesn't have the same level of control that a Zuckerberg does.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> How likely is Hastings to adopt that standard if he knew that it would apply to him too? He probably knows it applies to him whether or not he adopts it for people below him: CEOs usually have contracts that not only state that a "if you decide you don't want me, you write me a big check to go away" policy applies to them, but actually spell out in fairly precise terms how big of a check that is.
- zeveb 10y agoWhich implies that really, Netflix extends the same courtesy to all employees. Which is pretty awesome. Not being a good fit is a fact of life; having a cushion to find your next position is pretty nice.
- rpgmaker 10y agoThe amount the employee gets may be generous but seems to be arbitrary while the CEO's contract specifies clearly how much he or she will be owed. It certainly beats just getting the boot with no money.
- gaius 10y agoThe perils of operational work: the mark of success is that no-one knows what you do, or that you are even there.
- zjaffee 10y agoEhh, at least in todays world where teams that focus on operations in a DevOps environment, there are a lot more metrics that operations teams can be measured by other than just uptime. For example, lets say a decision is made that you want to spin up a new environment, deploy a new service, scale up or scale down a piece of infrastructure. A good operations team in this more modern space will have automated the vast majority of the work needed to do such things, and in turn, vastly improve developer productivity since they do not need to wait a month on operations to do such work.
- hibikir 10y agoBut how do we know what good automation is? It's easy to see terrible ops work, but it's hard to see amazing ops work. This leads many organizations to end up thinking that ops skill is about outage response. Guess what: The person that is best at fixing at outage is typically the one that caused it! Imagine I have two people in an ops team: One writes a lot of new code, and ships a lot of buggy features, and quickly reacts to the problems. People get the impression that they are working on something hard, and they are grateful for all the hard work. Another one takes longer to ship, but the automation just works. Therefore, whatever he was doing was easy, and they are just slow at doing it. So sadly, in most environments it pays off to actually have problems in your ops automation, for the visibility that you get by saving the day.
- gaius 10y ago"It's easy - I just click a button! What the hell are we paying all these guys/gals for?"
- asimuvPR 10y agoI always compare this with a mailbox and people get it. When you deposit a letter it just doesn't arrive magically to its destination. People, cars, trucks, trains, boats, and planes are part of the process tve gets your letter delivered. Their eyes usually open wide once understood.
- sevensor 10y ago> Think you're indispensable? Do they know that? Indispensable employees are a sign of organizational failure. They indicate a weak point in the organization -- if that person gets hit by a bus, or walks off the job, or is on vacation during a crisis, we're all in trouble. And if an employee becomes indispensable on purpose, that person is a problem and should be let go before the situation gets worse. Where I used to work, people who thought they were indispensable were the first to go when we had layoffs. All this is to say that if you ever find yourself thinking, "this place would fall apart without me," you have a big problem.
- ergothus 10y ago1) I think you're underestimating the number of shops that ARE "in trouble". There's a lot more tech-need in the world than tech-capable people right now, and with the places that have resources and organization gobbling up people, a lot of smaller shops (small startups, govt shops, small non-startup businesses) DO have indispensable people. And often those people will want to stay there. As for becoming indispensable on purpose...I'm sure some people do this, but most don't. This leads me to #2 below. 2) ...All of which is irrelevant since "indispensable" was mild hyperbole for "important/beneficial/worth keeping" in this discussion. I suppose I'll take the hit in the name of accuracy.
- sevensor 10y agoGood points, both of them. My experience with indispensable people comes from a big manufacturing organization. When I talk about people trying to become indispensable, I mean the engineer who had her hand in everything her department did and supported the line 24/7, and the technician who told me, "they'll never get rid of me, this place would fall apart without me." Among others. They really do exist, but perhaps it's less of a thing in software? I haven't worked with enough programmers to judge.
- ergothus 10y agoSoftware is by no means immune to what you list. Indeed, as Hubris is one of the Three Virtues of a Programmer, you definitely find it. That said, I think (my opinion) that you'll find more devs/admins that are PROUD to be indispensable than you will devs/admins that SEEK to become indispensable. Both cases are ignoring what you point out: having a indispensable person is a bad thing for the long term health of your business. But one case (pride) is just mistaking doing a lot of essential work as not also creating a problem, while the other (seeking it) is less forgivable. And of course, there's a third, much worse option ("spaghetti code is job security") that doesn't rely on good work at all. I've known a lot of devs that were close to indispensible and trying to fix it, fewer devs that were indispensable and proud of it, and only one or two that did crappy work so that they became more vital. A fair number of all of these devs were "responsible" for becoming indispensable simply by improving things to the point that their improvements became essential...and no one else had the skills/knowledge to easily replace them. But of course, my experiences are subjective.
- fma 10y agoI don't want to be indispensable. The last guy at my company that was indispensable, quit because he was indispensable. His manager relied on him too much. His manager was contemplating going to his house at 2AM when neither him nor is wife (he got her phone number from the emergency contact) could not be reached. The team survived just fine without, BTW. Although I'm a team lead, I make sure 1 other person knows what someone else has done, even my own work. I can go on vacation without worry. I can have someone else take up other people's task if someone is too much allocated.
- jrs235 10y ago>I make sure 1 other person knows what someone else has done, even my own work I try to do the same. I've often viewed my job as trying to eliminate my job by slowly delegating and having others able to fulfill my current responsibilities. Then I take on the next "level" of responsibilities and/or provide either more slack in my schedule or others. Slack is what allows organizations to operate smoothly and deal with change(s). If you aren't familiar with the concept of slack, I highly recommend reading "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency" by Tom DeMarco http://amzn.to/1sGWsWe http://amzn.to/1sGWsWe (affiliate link)
- brightball 10y agoI do the exact same thing. I figure my job is to automate my job.
- brightball 10y agoI do the exact same thing. I figure my job is to automate my job.
- matwood 10y agoIf another person cannot do your current job you cannot be promoted into another job. People who make themselves required at the current position are really hurting themselves long term.