Even if we ignore privacy and effectiveness, the problem with authoritarian methods is that they can (and most likely will) be abused. The justification may be to catch predators and terrorists (which is uncomfortable to argue against lest you be labeled a predator / terrorist sympathizer yourself), but it will in practice be used to surveil political rivals, journalists, activists etc.
Readit Newspooya13 commented on Assange case: Key witness admits he lied thewire.in/rights/julian-... · Posted by u/graderjs
true, but redundancy is hard to build on critical or under-documented parts of the code. It’s also hard to build when the knowledge needed is not something you can just sit down and do a brain-dump in an afternoon (ie you need a lot of context to see the light).
So, you can help people grow and keep your skill polished while you build up job security and hoard critical knowledge. I’m not saying it’s the right thing to do - just saying that I’ve seen it done and it worked for the persons doing it.
Having a codebase that is so convoluted that only you can work on is really not a skill you should risk your career on. It might work for those people you have seen in a short period, but long term they fall behind as they not only not develop generally valuable skills (because they are constantly working on that project), they also lack the skills to write clean collaborative code, which makes them less employable. So they would be in a very bad situation when that code base loses its value. (due to company going bankrupt or the project being shelved) My argument is not against hoarding critical knowledge. I am saying that by doing so you will be the single person responsible for that area, and therefore won’t have a chance to grow and diversify your knowledge base. I can only imagine a scenario when you are working in a hostile environment with really dumb management where that attitude could be rewarding and protect you. But in that scenario I would be looking for a new job and try to quit anyways. You don’t want to base your career goals on a specific position/employer.
I guess it’s a good way of thinking. But it’s too idealistic.
You see: if you do this it’s true that you might be able to make everyone’s life easier and you may advance your career, but (you knew there was a but) you also lose most of the leverage that comes with specialization and having critical knowledge. Yes, it may be harder to switch what you’re working on inside the current workplace, but it also means that passing you on promotions and rewards can lead to a lot of pain if you decide to look outside.
As always, there is a soft spot between being the perfect engineer and 100% disposable because of your impeccable “work ethic” vs just being a nightmare to work with and people not having a choice at all.
> you also lose most of the leverage that comes with specialization and having critical knowledge
Your value does not disappear when there is redundancy within your company. If it is a valuable skill there will always be a demand for it outside, and now you can also claim that you are also capable of coaching others in that skill. If the skill is not valuable to the outside world and is a niche to your company, I’d say you still want to move on from that skill exactly because it is not transferable to other jobs. What if your company goes bankrupt?
> Paradoxically, by being disposable, you free yourself. You make it easier for yourself to grow into a higher-level role and you make it easier for yourself to change the projects you work on.
I think the logical think between "grow into a higher-level role" and "being disposable" is very weak if any?
The company will pay big price to promote a highly-valued employee. The task which the employee was working on will be transferred to other member/team in the company, so the promoted employee could work on more important tasks. Some company allows/requires the promoted employee to also monitor the situation to ensure the transaction of task is done correctly during/after the promotion.
On the other hand, from a company's stand point, a quitting employee should never be a big concern even if someone intentionally make themselves "indispensable".
The points in the article that I agreed with:
- "Document your meetings", I always do and call it memo
- "Give power to the people"
- "Do not make yourself the point of contact", I explain what I was doing in the comments of my code
- Not sure why the author put this in, but "Always be learning"
> Not sure why the author put this in, but "Always be learning"
The point of the article is that by increasing team productivity to reduce your own tasks, you now have the chance to learn new things and grow into new roles as opposed to being stuck with the same responsibilities.
It’s a fundamental problem of misaligned incentives between the employee and employer.
It is in the interests of the employee to have a more defensible position, even if it increases employer risk.
Your best defence are your capabilities. Being “indispensable” means nothing if the company goes under.
seems like you need to find a job with better management
Exactly. If you increase team productivity and your boss fires you for it instead of promoting you, then the company is doomed so why would you want to work for them?
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Most certainly there are idiots at OpenAI.