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> But the corollary there is that if your teams can handle just as well without you as with you, then the rational decision would be for your company to just fi

> But the corollary there is that if your teams can handle just as well without you as with you, then the rational decision would be for your company to just fire you if you aren't raising the output or success probabilities of your team. IMO, anyone who deprecates themselves from an important role within a team has successfully scaled themselves in a very interesting way (same output, but person is free to do other things). Such a person would seem very valuable and destined to scale in even more interesting ways.

kmonsen 4y ago
Or they didn't really contribute before.
JimmieMcnulty 4y ago
That's just manager talk for "we weren't needed here". For example, you say "important role" but who called it important? Were the engineers demanding someone do this job, or was it presumed to be an important job when someone was building out the team? If someone came into a highly-demanded (by the team itself) role and turned the responsibilities around into work the team can take care of on its own, that's valuable work for sure. But if this was just a role created by an executive as a result of, "We've always needed one of these", then maybe not so much.
- 0xfaded 4y ago
  I've personally done something similar through mentorship. Learn something interesting and relevant to the company (in this case scheduling and convex optimization), build something, document, teach others how it works, move on. You can create organizational chaos by skipping that last step, you may even achieve job security. But it's blatantly obvious to both your managers and coworkers if you fight to keep them off your turf. Don't expect respect or admiration.
- woah 4y ago
  If you can have the team work well without you, you could probably spend the same time that you used to on one team on five teams. If you're not getting promoted to the level that you can do that, you should probably find a different place to work.
thenerdhead 4y ago
If a good doctor cures their patients to no longer need them, should they be fired? Absolutely not. The jobs that are the most respectable are the ones where your job is to put yourself out of a job. Management can be a noble profession because of this. I 100% agree they have scaled / transcended their “job” at that point.
- tkiolp4 4y ago
  It could be as well that the patients were never sick to begin with. The doctor was not needed to begin with (middle management is not always needed, but “we’ve always done it like that”)
zikzak 4y ago
"If you can't replaced, you can't be promoted" -- sometimes attributed to Lee Iacocca Don't manage your work from a place of fear. If you really don't want to be promoted, that's fine. I respect people that have that opinion. But don't try to ensure job security by slowing the organization down to reassure yourself you're too essential to replace.

kmonsen 4y ago

Or they didn't really contribute before.

JimmieMcnulty 4y ago

That's just manager talk for "we weren't needed here". For example, you say "important role" but who called it important? Were the engineers demanding someone do this job, or was it presumed to be an important job when someone was building out the team? If someone came into a highly-demanded (by the team itself) role and turned the responsibilities around into work the team can take care of on its own, that's valuable work for sure. But if this was just a role created by an executive as a result of, "We've always needed one of these", then maybe not so much.

0xfaded 4y ago
I've personally done something similar through mentorship. Learn something interesting and relevant to the company (in this case scheduling and convex optimization), build something, document, teach others how it works, move on. You can create organizational chaos by skipping that last step, you may even achieve job security. But it's blatantly obvious to both your managers and coworkers if you fight to keep them off your turf. Don't expect respect or admiration.
woah 4y ago
If you can have the team work well without you, you could probably spend the same time that you used to on one team on five teams. If you're not getting promoted to the level that you can do that, you should probably find a different place to work.

thenerdhead 4y ago

If a good doctor cures their patients to no longer need them, should they be fired? Absolutely not. The jobs that are the most respectable are the ones where your job is to put yourself out of a job. Management can be a noble profession because of this. I 100% agree they have scaled / transcended their “job” at that point.

tkiolp4 4y ago
It could be as well that the patients were never sick to begin with. The doctor was not needed to begin with (middle management is not always needed, but “we’ve always done it like that”)

zikzak 4y ago

"If you can't replaced, you can't be promoted" -- sometimes attributed to Lee Iacocca Don't manage your work from a place of fear. If you really don't want to be promoted, that's fine. I respect people that have that opinion. But don't try to ensure job security by slowing the organization down to reassure yourself you're too essential to replace.