6 ms·

I've heard that line of being indispensable to a company so many times. Turns out that it's not true. They'll find someone to replace you.

conradfr 14y ago
The trick is to make people think you are indispensable. I think more than often the real challenge is the knowledge, not the skills. IIRC there was a post linked HN about that problem, written by GitHub or Stripe maybe ?
kaonashi 14y ago
Usually it's just a case of understaffing and not being prepared for an employee leaving on short notice.
mbesto 14y ago
Ya, but at what cost?
bobsy 14y ago
I think in many cases people over-estimate their worth. Where I work I am the only real developer. I wrote and maintain all the products. This makes me pretty indispensable. It also helps that before I arrived the guy in charge of the company had a bad time with at least 3 developers. If there is something I cannot do he tasks me to find someone and manage them so you know... Obviously, guy could find someone else. Someone else could take the reigns of what I am doing. However transition time and the guys past experience with developers makes this very unlikely.
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Please do not believe he is unaware of this situation and is not made nervous by it. Unless he is a fool - which he cannot be so much because he trusts you to get the job done :-) He operates in a market for lemons, but one day it may be more comfortable for him to risk getting a Lemon Consulting firm than live with the stress of one guy who might leave and take the whole thing down with him.
  - pyre 14y ago
    Plenty of companies have a keystone developer that they don't replace/duplicate.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- jablan 14y ago
  While I know nothing about you and your skills, this doesn't have to be always that simple. People who are "the only developer" in a company often get detached from the developer community, living in a kind of technology bubble they created. These people always solve the problems "their way", often obsolete, using inferior tools. They can write tons of code, when there's already a tool which does the trick just a google away. Again, I am not talking with you personally in mind, but simply being the sole programmer doesn't make one indispensable.
- ohwp 14y ago
  Once I was the only "indispensable" developer too. Also under a bad managing owner. When I left I offered to help in time of a crisis. Never heard of him again. Ask yourself this: do you get paid for the risk of you leaving? And ask yourself this: can your family enjoy you when you feel bad?
- obviouslygreen 14y ago
  I think in many cases people over-estimate their worth. Where I work I am the only real developer. I wrote and maintain all the products. I learned this lesson the hard way, long ago, in exactly that same situation -- it took two times -- by attempting to use leverage I didn't actually have but believed I did. I hope most people are less dense than I was (hopefully "was" is the right word there), because no matter what percentage of the work you do or how deep and unique your knowledge of a system is, you can be replaced. It may not be easy or quick, but if you make yourself a nuisance, get on someone's bad side, or any of myriad things in and out of your control, you can and will end up on the chopping block, wondering what just happened.
- ryanmolden 14y ago
  I think, as a general rule, people overestimate the value of their own skillsets/contributions and underestimate the skillsets/contributions of others. It is probably a Jedi mind trick to make ourselves feel more important/smarter/what have you. Luckily the free market for labor mostly exists (ignoring possibly shady deals between certain large tech companies) and people feeling undervalued can test that theory by shopping their skillset around. I think more people feel undervalued/underappreciated than pursue the "shopping around" angle. There are lots of reasons/excuses as to why, but protecting one's ego probably has a role, acknowledged or not.
RyanZAG 14y ago
As an anecdote to disprove that, I know of a number of small businesses that were doing decently that tanked shortly after a key employee resigned. It happens fairly often in small companies, especially in the case of a sales manager who maintains most of the personal relationships with clients.
- hga 14y ago
  Exactly; that's happened with me at 3-4 companies where bad management prompted me to leave and they died ugly deaths not too long after.
EliRivers 14y ago
I could put a monkey in someone's chair with the same job responsibilities. Doesn't mean I've replaced that person; I've simply found a way to occupy their space and assign their tasks.
muyuu 14y ago
If I leave my company they would simply have to drop the system I basically made on my own. Not saying it cannot be done, but it would lose them a ton of money. Yep, it's a double-edge sword because it puts a non-trivial amount of pressure over me. Even if they found someone with the rare combination of skills required, it would set them back years in the most optimistic scenario. So yeah, "indispensable" people do exist. In the sense that you can lose big by parting ways with some people and not effectively replace them. Obviously life would go on, eh.
- kirkus 14y ago
  Poor managers allow individual employees to become indispensable.
  - muyuu 14y ago
    Surely that does happen but it wasn't my case. The option was basically not doing it. Since I made up for my cost it wasn't a bad idea I guess. Now if I get struck by lightning then they will lose future earnings but that's that. It's a big company and other parts of the company would continue just fine. Not all resources are exchangeable, esp. when some niche research is involved.
  - jrs235 14y ago
    I don't agree with my boss a lot of time. Recently he brought up the concern that "what if" something happened to me? He has a solid concern, I told him that it would be and is wise to have another developer on par with my knowledge and skill set. He said he doesn't want me to leave (sometimes I question that, because I'm not his deisred "yes" man). I've been on the fence for a long time about whether to leave or not, because of him. I enjoy most everyone else and the product we build/sell and company. After thinking about this more I realized if we do hire someone to cover me while on vacation or if I have an accident... the social norm/aspect/idea of duty and obligation to help and support my fellow co-workers would be lighted on my shoulders... making it easier for me to leave!
  - YZF 14y ago
    It can work both ways. A brilliant employee who is hard to replace can add a lot of value to a company. If you insist on creating a process where developers are replaceable cogs in a machine the output you get will look like something that came out of said machine. Managers should encourage employees to become highly valuable and at the same time manage the risk of those employees leaving some day - preferably mostly by creating the right environment for those employees to flourish.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
It's not even that. It's that they don't care. Most often they care more about power and process than results. It doesn't matter if you're "indispensable" to the company. A company will cut off its own nose to spite its face, and it will relish doing so. Sure, it may mean a huge setback for them, it may cost them millions even, but often they don't care. They'll just hire more people and apply enough effort to continue working. The one thing that took me a long time to realize is that even when it comes to something like software if you throw enough half-assed labor at a problem there is a reasonable chance that eventually something of significant legitimate value can be created. No, it probably won't be as good as something created by a bunch of geniuses, but it can still end up being "good". When you play the long game or the big game you can afford to rely on half-assedness to work out in the end.
- dotborg 14y ago
  Software engineer job is not different from any other and I can't see any reason why it SHOULD be.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Oh, it's plenty different. First off, software is not one thing. It encompasses more orders of magnitude of difference than almost any other industry. At one end you might have throwaway fart apps or single serving joke websites and at the other end you might have spacecraft avionics or industrial systems control or banking systems, and in the middle there is a multi-dimensional realm of tremendous breadth and volume. Additionally, software construction is by its nature creative. Creating a million or a billion or even a trillion copies of a piece of software is a more or less trivial and heavily automated task. Software isn't like making cars or houses or bridges. When you make a bridge there is a lot of work that goes into design but most of the work is in implementation. In software the implementation (the actual running of the software) is automated, all of the development work and all of the so-called "implementation" work is in truth just design work on finer and finer scales. The combination of all of these factors makes software a different sort of beast than a lot of other work. Now, as I said, that doesn't mean that you can't still attack it with brute force and obtain results, but software is actually one of the realms where that is one of the least effective strategies.
heliodor 14y ago
Many times there exists the feeling that quitting your job makes you a traitor. Making employees feel indispensable feeds into the traitor concept, making them less inclined to leave. We hired a manager at one of my previous jobs who during a meeting literally told us to never mention any former employees! Contracting, though I've never done it, sounds like a much healthier relationship between employer and employee. It does have it's own negative aspects though. I wish full-time jobs weren't such adversarial relationships where you're either with us or you're against us, if you quit.
kitsune_ 14y ago
I think people mean that in the current environment and configuration of the team, they are indispensable. And that of course, can be true. The team would not be able to function without them. Of course a company can always find another fool to replace them. Many smaller businesses work that way. They have a core group of often arrogant and unskilled old-timers that for one reason or another, cannot and will not be fired. I've seen this more than once, with clients and companies I've worked for. The company cycles through talented new employees every other year. Once these employees are burnt out and move on to greener pastures, the company will find a new sucker to fill in their shoes. Rinse and repeat.

conradfr 14y ago

The trick is to make people think you are indispensable. I think more than often the real challenge is the knowledge, not the skills. IIRC there was a post linked HN about that problem, written by GitHub or Stripe maybe ?

kaonashi 14y ago

Usually it's just a case of understaffing and not being prepared for an employee leaving on short notice.

mbesto 14y ago

Ya, but at what cost?

bobsy 14y ago

I think in many cases people over-estimate their worth. Where I work I am the only real developer. I wrote and maintain all the products. This makes me pretty indispensable. It also helps that before I arrived the guy in charge of the company had a bad time with at least 3 developers. If there is something I cannot do he tasks me to find someone and manage them so you know... Obviously, guy could find someone else. Someone else could take the reigns of what I am doing. However transition time and the guys past experience with developers makes this very unlikely.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Please do not believe he is unaware of this situation and is not made nervous by it. Unless he is a fool - which he cannot be so much because he trusts you to get the job done :-) He operates in a market for lemons, but one day it may be more comfortable for him to risk getting a Lemon Consulting firm than live with the stress of one guy who might leave and take the whole thing down with him.
- pyre 14y ago
  Plenty of companies have a keystone developer that they don't replace/duplicate.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
jablan 14y ago
While I know nothing about you and your skills, this doesn't have to be always that simple. People who are "the only developer" in a company often get detached from the developer community, living in a kind of technology bubble they created. These people always solve the problems "their way", often obsolete, using inferior tools. They can write tons of code, when there's already a tool which does the trick just a google away. Again, I am not talking with you personally in mind, but simply being the sole programmer doesn't make one indispensable.
ohwp 14y ago
Once I was the only "indispensable" developer too. Also under a bad managing owner. When I left I offered to help in time of a crisis. Never heard of him again. Ask yourself this: do you get paid for the risk of you leaving? And ask yourself this: can your family enjoy you when you feel bad?
obviouslygreen 14y ago
I think in many cases people over-estimate their worth. Where I work I am the only real developer. I wrote and maintain all the products. I learned this lesson the hard way, long ago, in exactly that same situation -- it took two times -- by attempting to use leverage I didn't actually have but believed I did. I hope most people are less dense than I was (hopefully "was" is the right word there), because no matter what percentage of the work you do or how deep and unique your knowledge of a system is, you can be replaced. It may not be easy or quick, but if you make yourself a nuisance, get on someone's bad side, or any of myriad things in and out of your control, you can and will end up on the chopping block, wondering what just happened.
ryanmolden 14y ago
I think, as a general rule, people overestimate the value of their own skillsets/contributions and underestimate the skillsets/contributions of others. It is probably a Jedi mind trick to make ourselves feel more important/smarter/what have you. Luckily the free market for labor mostly exists (ignoring possibly shady deals between certain large tech companies) and people feeling undervalued can test that theory by shopping their skillset around. I think more people feel undervalued/underappreciated than pursue the "shopping around" angle. There are lots of reasons/excuses as to why, but protecting one's ego probably has a role, acknowledged or not.

RyanZAG 14y ago

As an anecdote to disprove that, I know of a number of small businesses that were doing decently that tanked shortly after a key employee resigned. It happens fairly often in small companies, especially in the case of a sales manager who maintains most of the personal relationships with clients.

hga 14y ago
Exactly; that's happened with me at 3-4 companies where bad management prompted me to leave and they died ugly deaths not too long after.

EliRivers 14y ago

I could put a monkey in someone's chair with the same job responsibilities. Doesn't mean I've replaced that person; I've simply found a way to occupy their space and assign their tasks.

muyuu 14y ago

If I leave my company they would simply have to drop the system I basically made on my own. Not saying it cannot be done, but it would lose them a ton of money. Yep, it's a double-edge sword because it puts a non-trivial amount of pressure over me. Even if they found someone with the rare combination of skills required, it would set them back years in the most optimistic scenario. So yeah, "indispensable" people do exist. In the sense that you can lose big by parting ways with some people and not effectively replace them. Obviously life would go on, eh.

kirkus 14y ago
Poor managers allow individual employees to become indispensable.
- muyuu 14y ago
  Surely that does happen but it wasn't my case. The option was basically not doing it. Since I made up for my cost it wasn't a bad idea I guess. Now if I get struck by lightning then they will lose future earnings but that's that. It's a big company and other parts of the company would continue just fine. Not all resources are exchangeable, esp. when some niche research is involved.
- jrs235 14y ago
  I don't agree with my boss a lot of time. Recently he brought up the concern that "what if" something happened to me? He has a solid concern, I told him that it would be and is wise to have another developer on par with my knowledge and skill set. He said he doesn't want me to leave (sometimes I question that, because I'm not his deisred "yes" man). I've been on the fence for a long time about whether to leave or not, because of him. I enjoy most everyone else and the product we build/sell and company. After thinking about this more I realized if we do hire someone to cover me while on vacation or if I have an accident... the social norm/aspect/idea of duty and obligation to help and support my fellow co-workers would be lighted on my shoulders... making it easier for me to leave!
- YZF 14y ago
  It can work both ways. A brilliant employee who is hard to replace can add a lot of value to a company. If you insist on creating a process where developers are replaceable cogs in a machine the output you get will look like something that came out of said machine. Managers should encourage employees to become highly valuable and at the same time manage the risk of those employees leaving some day - preferably mostly by creating the right environment for those employees to flourish.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

It's not even that. It's that they don't care. Most often they care more about power and process than results. It doesn't matter if you're "indispensable" to the company. A company will cut off its own nose to spite its face, and it will relish doing so. Sure, it may mean a huge setback for them, it may cost them millions even, but often they don't care. They'll just hire more people and apply enough effort to continue working. The one thing that took me a long time to realize is that even when it comes to something like software if you throw enough half-assed labor at a problem there is a reasonable chance that eventually something of significant legitimate value can be created. No, it probably won't be as good as something created by a bunch of geniuses, but it can still end up being "good". When you play the long game or the big game you can afford to rely on half-assedness to work out in the end.

dotborg 14y ago
Software engineer job is not different from any other and I can't see any reason why it SHOULD be.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Oh, it's plenty different. First off, software is not one thing. It encompasses more orders of magnitude of difference than almost any other industry. At one end you might have throwaway fart apps or single serving joke websites and at the other end you might have spacecraft avionics or industrial systems control or banking systems, and in the middle there is a multi-dimensional realm of tremendous breadth and volume. Additionally, software construction is by its nature creative. Creating a million or a billion or even a trillion copies of a piece of software is a more or less trivial and heavily automated task. Software isn't like making cars or houses or bridges. When you make a bridge there is a lot of work that goes into design but most of the work is in implementation. In software the implementation (the actual running of the software) is automated, all of the development work and all of the so-called "implementation" work is in truth just design work on finer and finer scales. The combination of all of these factors makes software a different sort of beast than a lot of other work. Now, as I said, that doesn't mean that you can't still attack it with brute force and obtain results, but software is actually one of the realms where that is one of the least effective strategies.

heliodor 14y ago

Many times there exists the feeling that quitting your job makes you a traitor. Making employees feel indispensable feeds into the traitor concept, making them less inclined to leave. We hired a manager at one of my previous jobs who during a meeting literally told us to never mention any former employees! Contracting, though I've never done it, sounds like a much healthier relationship between employer and employee. It does have it's own negative aspects though. I wish full-time jobs weren't such adversarial relationships where you're either with us or you're against us, if you quit.

kitsune_ 14y ago

I think people mean that in the current environment and configuration of the team, they are indispensable. And that of course, can be true. The team would not be able to function without them. Of course a company can always find another fool to replace them. Many smaller businesses work that way. They have a core group of often arrogant and unskilled old-timers that for one reason or another, cannot and will not be fired. I've seen this more than once, with clients and companies I've worked for. The company cycles through talented new employees every other year. Once these employees are burnt out and move on to greener pastures, the company will find a new sucker to fill in their shoes. Rinse and repeat.