[panny]

>No one is irreplaceable, and no one is an island.

I've watched a business fall apart slowly after the only developer on the legacy project left. Nobody knows the old framework, nobody wants to waste time learning something that won't advance their career, and finding an existing person familiar with it is search for a needle in a haystack.

A developer can find a new position in a matter of weeks. A business takes months to fill a position, then months more to ramp up as the new hire has to learn the unfamiliar code base. In a market with lots of competition, it can be catastrophic, but management has the mindset that we're all cogs until it's too late.

[iamthemonster]

In this type of case, the lack of succession planning is the root cause. The problem with succession planning is that management think that it applies to them, even though their skillset is more transferable and their roles are much more malleable, whereas it really needs to apply more to the specialists.

[seneca]

> management has the mindset that we're all cogs until it's too late

I hate reading this. Not because I think people who say it are wrong, but because so many engineers have had experiences that lead them to believe it. During my management career, I risked my own standing in a company more than once to back up people in my org. If a manager isn't willing to risk their own skin to make sure their team is treat with dignity and respect they aren't a leader, they're just a politician.

[victoro]

It's tough to avoid this thinking because examples of employees being treated like cogs are often systemic and very public -- like stack ranking at big companies that everyone (even people that don't work there) either knows about or ends up knowing about. Meanwhile, examples of managers risking their own skin are more likely to be individual and private -- sometimes to the point that the affected employee doesn't even know it happened because it was behind the scenes -- like a manager defending a performance review of an employee in a calibration meeting with other managers.

[brailsafe]

> A developer can find a new position in a matter of weeks.

Maybe, but it's not been my experience. It's taken a year and a half. It previously took a year.

[perryizgr8]

If someone is so irreplaceable and integral, the company should be paying over and above market rate to ensure they don't look outside.

[msandford]

There is such a thing as "key man insurance" or person. It pays out if a person leaves or dies or what have you. It depends on management recognizing a person's importance so they can purchase the policy before someone leaves.