Nobody is indispensable

As My Dear Old Father Used To Say #1

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This article is the first in a series called “As My Dear Old Father Used To Say”. Most of the things my father said are not fit for public consumption, seeing as he was Dutch and ran a bar, but some of his insights are surprisingly relevant to the world of information technology.

When I was a young boy, my mum was admitted to a local hospital with excruciating pain. Turned out to be kidney stones. This was before they could dissolve them from the outside (or maybe they were the “wrong” kind for that), so she was to be operated on to have them removed. As a dutiful son, I would go to the hospital every day together with my father and brother to visit mum. Since both my parents smoked like chimneys, we would typically retire to the break room where such unhealthy activities were allowed. There were always these two men there, dressed in pajamas and bathrobes and not doing a lot. There was nothing obviously wrong with them, so after a few days I asked my mum what the deal was with these guys. She explained to me that these were (formerly) high powered sales executives from some local company who had "burnt out". 

Since this was the early 1980s and I was still quite young, I had no idea what being “burnt out” was. To be honest, I don’t think a lot of other people did either; it was just not a big topic of conversation. My mum explained that these men had worked so hard for so long that they had had nervous breakdowns and eventually had to be hospitalized to recover. Then, ominously, she added: "Their colleagues came to visit them only once and they haven’t heard a thing from them since..."

As a young nerd this made an unforgettable impression on me. It seemed like such a bad trade-off: Why would you work yourself into a “burn out” for a company that clearly didn't care for you once you got admitted to the hospital because of all of your hard work?

In the last two decades there has been a lot of attention for topics like burn out and work-life balance. Even people who have never actually worked a lot seem to be aware of it. By now, the propensity of young people to worry about their work-life balance is becoming a bit of a joke to old farts such as myself and, apparently, to the creators of South Park :-)

Unrelated, but I dislike the term work-life balance as it seems to suggest there are two things, work and life. There is actually only just one thing, it’s called life, and it needs to be in balance in all of its aspects.

But that is actually not what I wanted to write about today, even though there is a lot to be said about life balance and the many ways we are still getting that wrong.

Instead, I wanted to talk about something that is at the root of many burn out cases, namely the thought that you are indispensable and that without you, everything around you would crumble.

We have probably all been in the following situation: We are working on some important system. It is crazy complicated, full of tech debt and without documentation. The code is crap. Whenever something, anything, needs to happen to this system, the powers that be ask for our help. In many cases we actually have to do the work ourselves, because nobody else has even an inkling about where to start. We are openly described as the only people who know how this system works and new people are told that if we leave it will all crumble behind us and the company is doomed.

Then we leave. But instead of the sound of a system collapsing in on itself and the cries of executives who are begging us to come back, we hear a whole lotta silence, sometimes only disturbed by the low background hum of inertia.

Why is this happening? Why did the universe not collapse? Quite simply because, as my dear old father used to say: “The cemetery is full of people who were indispensable.”

The reason the company didn’t crumble when we left is because we were not indispensable. Actually, pretty much nobody is indispensable, which by a simple logic operation means that almost everyone is dispensable.

Even in cases where IT systems publicly and spectacularly crumble because of lack of knowledgeable people, that is not because there was a single, or even a small group, of people who got out and left the organization crippled. Invariably in these cases, the system got worse and worse over time until it reached some critical state of complexity where nobody knew anymore how it all worked and so when something failed or the system had to be changed or an unexpected high volume of transactions was sent in, it just toppled over and no single individual could have prevented or fixed that.

That doesn't mean that your departure couldn't inconvenience the organization temporarily. It probably could and when that happens some projects are postponed, other smart people are hired, maybe the vendor is asked to send in some consultants, or plans to get rid of that old pile of crap get expedited. All of that is an annoyance, but no executive is going to get fired because they let you leave rather than offering you a $1 million salary and your own private corporate jet. Even if that would, on the whole, be cheaper than doing all of these other things, there are a lot of reasons for organizations not to let themselves be kept hostage by a single employee.

Side story: I used to work for this software company started by three brothers whose alternative careers paths probably would have been running an organized crime syndicate. One of the software packages we built and sold was for insurance agencies; it was written in the most awful BASIC and over time had grown into a sprawling mess of spaghetti. One employee left and then we had only one person left who knew anything about this system and he was the only one who could make modifications or fix bugs. He used his position well and negotiated a great salary and a fancy company car. We then hired a new colleague who was explicitly instructed to learn the ins and outs of the insurance agency package. After a few months the brothers asked the new guy if he was up to speed. He answered "yes". They asked him if he was sure. He answered "yes" again. Then, for good measure, they asked him if he was really sure. When he answered “yes” again, they turned around and fired the other guy with extreme prejudice. This might seem dumb because we had gone from a situation where only one person knew anything about the system to a situation where we still had only one person who knew anything about the system. Still everyone thought this was an improvement.

It does feel good to be important. Personally I love it when I get compliments for my good work. I also have a touch of the Messiah Complex, the mistaken belief that I am Jesus Christ the Savior. If you come to me and say: "Jos, can you solve this problem, you are the only person who can help us,” I often think: "Yeah, that makes sense, this is very difficult and I have unique knowledge and skills so I really am the only person who can help them." When that happens I am, of course, totally wrong. They probably come to me because I am a sucker, not because I am a genius…

So don't get tricked into thinking you are indispensable. It is bad for you, it leads to bad life balance, and it is not even true.

The only people who you are kind of indispensable to are your immediate family because their life might actually suck were you to disappear unexpectedly and, in contrast to your colleagues and other professional associates, your family would actually miss you.

Let this insight guide your actions.