Even in offices, the myth is that everyone is replaceable at a moment's notice, because that is a comfortable thought for those in charge that makes it easier t

Even in offices, the myth is that everyone is replaceable at a moment's notice, because that is a comfortable thought for those in charge that makes it easier to play "4D chess" with the corporate pawns and integrate seamlessly with quarterly and yearly budgets. It's based on the law of averages and cements ending up with mediocre workers and products at best. Exceptional workers in key (non-management) positions will take whatever they've learned with them, never to return. That leads to failed excavation projects looking for the original reasoning and business logic. Then, things need to be recreated from scratch because there is no alternative besides hiring the former worker as an expensive consultant. All because people failed to plan ahead and guarantee actual continuity, focusing exclusively on the small subset of elementary tasks. In the end, the work becomes more disorganised and product/service quality suffers because of gaps in domain knowledge, context and competence. That myth might be relatively harmless in the primary and secondary sectors to a large degree, but is actively harmful in the tertiary, quaternary and quinary sectors. If you factor in that most of the work - both in terms of quality and volume - is done by a small minority of employees, the prevailing management dogma is costing companies lots of money to entertain the notion that worker retention is a secondary consideration. It's especially myopic because it usually doesn't take a whole lot to keep people happy in their jobs, leveraged as they are by their own obligations.