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A comment on On Being Indispensable. Parent comment

Re:On Being Indispensable by ivraatiems on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @01:33AM (#30695654)
What's your goal, though? I'd like my company to not absolutely 100% need my constant presence, and I don't want to be in the author's position where he is not doing what he could be most valuable doing. But I do want my company to think "wow, that ivraatiems, we're sure lucky to have him." I would want them to think twice about firing me or laying me off if layoffs were happening. I definitely would not like to have to go look for a new job unexpectedly.

So, I want to be personally valuable to the company - maybe more valuable than the average engineer - but I don't want to have indispensable knowledge that locks me in place. Surely there's a middle ground here?

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Re:On Being Indispensable by bartvk on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @03:21AM (#30696144)
I think the middle ground is to have a huge stash of savings. That way, the original proposition isn't really relevant anymore. (That proposition being, I need to be valuable so I don't get fired).
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Re:On Being Indispensable by ip26 on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @02:05AM (#30695804)
Presumably the goal is to be nominally replaceable, but just so all-around awesome they’d be sore to lose you.

Easy, right?

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Re:On Being Indispensable by scarface74 on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @06:05AM (#30697010)
I worked at 3 companies between 2014-2020. My goal going in was to solve the set of problems I was hired to solve by the then new manager and “put myself out of job”.

Today working in a consulting department, I refuse to take on any work that may look like “staff augmentation”. I just do project based implementations with a definition of done and set aside time for training the customer.

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Re:On Being Indispensable by gowld on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:44PM (#30701085)
Be the best at two things, and train someone to do the less rewarding thing while you learn a new thing.
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