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> I'm the guy with the picture that's on puzzle box, rather than having to place each puzzle piece. This is such a great phrase! It so succinctly captures a si
by gen220 6y ago
> I'm the guy with the picture that's on puzzle box, rather than having to place each puzzle piece.
This is such a great phrase! It so succinctly captures a situation I think we've all observed many times, but I've always struggled to encode it in words.
> I've tried really hard to make myself obsolete and do something else, but it has backfired spectacularly.
How has this backfired, I'm curious?
I'm imagining that the future-you's fail to seamlessly slot-in, and management types don't have an appetite for broken eggs on the way to an omelette, when they already have an omelette in you?
> I'm useful and in essence acting as "an elder" store of information about the past & a slightly clearer view of the future.
I wonder, do you feel any anxiety about this?
As in, you're valuable at $COMPANY_X, but you're not challenged to better yourself beyond what you already are. Much of your value to $COMPANY_X derives from skills and knowledge that are specific to $COMPANY_X / $INDUSTRY.
For me, the anxiety would come from the question "sure, I have this here and now, but would I be able to reproduce this elsewhere, or what this a fluke?", and it would increase with tenure. :)
Curious to hear your thoughts on this, too.
- gopalv 6y ago> How has this backfired, I'm curious? .. > I'm imagining that the future-you's fail to seamlessly slot-in, and management types don't have an appetite for broken eggs on the way to an omelette, when they already have an omelette in you? No, not that way - I took about 9 months off in the last 4 years, which has forced a replacement of my past self. But there are still problems which are "new". So in a manner of speaking, but more along the lines of filtering out all the easy problems with automation, documentation, others with similar skills - by the time the buck stops at my desk, I have nowhere to move it to. Instead of being obsolete, I'm a SPOF higher up the problem complexity. The more guesswork I do, the better I am at guessing what's wrong and every time I pull off a further "last minute miracle", the more entrenched I become, rather than obsolete. > For me, the anxiety would come from the question "sure, I have this here and now, but would I be able to reproduce this elsewhere, or what this a fluke?" The success part of it was a total fluke - lots of bets on me by others which came through.
- swiftcoder 6y ago> Instead of being obsolete, I'm a SPOF higher up the problem complexity. This seems somewhat inevitable for "high performers". The only way round it I'm aware of is to hitch your wagon to an SPOF further up the chain.