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I can only speak from personal observations as a Canadian; note that I am using female workers/maternity examples and pronouns to try to answer the specific que

I can only speak from personal observations as a Canadian; note that I am using female workers/maternity examples and pronouns to try to answer the specific question posed, especially since historically my observed experience has been predominantly with maternity leaves, but also note that in Canada men can increasingly take paternity leave instead/in addition, which I 101% support and further believe will further make this less of a concern/issue. My wife is a store manager for a major international hardware store chain, and much of her senior leadership team up and down (assistant store managers working for her, as well as her district manager she reports to) are female as well, so in their neck of the woods at least there's no passive selection. Due to nature of pregnancy, maternity leave is something that lends itself to some heads-up, so as far as I have observed the company handles it through careful, productive and communicative planning. This may include contracted positions, but also internal temporary/trial opportunities - role only being available for a period of time is not necessarily a bad thing, if you know and plan for it. Additionally, while people will fall onto a curve and experience counts (so we're not all fully replaceable blocks or cogs), nevertheless you can build an organization that has documented procedures, overlap, and shared collaborative knowledge. I absolutely have seen people who are "irreplaceable" (and have occasionally occupied such a position), but it's all too frequently just a gap, that is addressable if you're forced to address it and need to do so ahead of time. Similarly in my line of work, both the functional and technical experts as well as middle managers or senior leadership, happen to have a majority of female team members, and while as IT/BT projectized organization we are less proceduralized than my wife's organization, again - you see it coming, and you prepare for it. Bottom line - I really think the combination of seeing it coming and having to deal with it, makes it far less of an issue than it might seem from the other side :-/

jacobsenscott 8y ago
I have never seen an irreplaceable employee at any level, from the c-suite on down. I've seen lots who think they are.
- NikolaNovak 8y ago
  I think it may get philosophical/semantic very quickly, but let me put it this way: I have worked on projects, even with 50+ team member size, where I can identify a single person whose removal would cause us to miss KPI/SLAs. Thus, in practical ways, they are at least temporarily [for given value of "temporary", which may be days or years] "practically irreplaceable" and their absence hurts. They may not be "strictly/formally irreplaceable", but it would take 5 people 5 times as long to do certain aspects of their job poorly, and we'd blow our targets. Note that this was not usually due to specific skillset as such (which theoretically, for a price, you may be able to find on the market), but usually their personal, deep, historic knowledge of the specific project, client, requirements, and system. Things that are currently a 30 second question to this person, many many times a day, might become hours or days of reverse engineering either code, or requirements, or both, only to still not have complete answer, for each instance. Multiply by factor of 10-20 occurrences daily, and force multiply during active IRs. Typically, both this person and project recognize this SPOF but there's some reason why it takes a long time to remedy. (Occasionally though, but rarely, this is instead a particular type of contractor/consultant who believes withholding information is a job security method; depending on the market, this is a short gain as word spreads fast once project has finally routed around the problem)

jacobsenscott 8y ago

I have never seen an irreplaceable employee at any level, from the c-suite on down. I've seen lots who think they are.

NikolaNovak 8y ago
I think it may get philosophical/semantic very quickly, but let me put it this way: I have worked on projects, even with 50+ team member size, where I can identify a single person whose removal would cause us to miss KPI/SLAs. Thus, in practical ways, they are at least temporarily [for given value of "temporary", which may be days or years] "practically irreplaceable" and their absence hurts. They may not be "strictly/formally irreplaceable", but it would take 5 people 5 times as long to do certain aspects of their job poorly, and we'd blow our targets. Note that this was not usually due to specific skillset as such (which theoretically, for a price, you may be able to find on the market), but usually their personal, deep, historic knowledge of the specific project, client, requirements, and system. Things that are currently a 30 second question to this person, many many times a day, might become hours or days of reverse engineering either code, or requirements, or both, only to still not have complete answer, for each instance. Multiply by factor of 10-20 occurrences daily, and force multiply during active IRs. Typically, both this person and project recognize this SPOF but there's some reason why it takes a long time to remedy. (Occasionally though, but rarely, this is instead a particular type of contractor/consultant who believes withholding information is a job security method; depending on the market, this is a short gain as word spreads fast once project has finally routed around the problem)