[kayodelycaon]

Many companies work on the assumption everyone is replaceable because upper management doesn’t know or/and doesn’t care who is valuable.

Most of the downsides of losing critical staff aren’t visible short term. The opportunity cost and loss of sustainability is never factored in and later attributed to employees not working hard enough.

[lanstin]

management can't tell who is valuable. I am senior IC but even with cloning people's repos it isn't particularly easy to tell how good someone is.you have people who speak very confidently but don't make good code, in those subtle details that make the difference between 90% chance of serious bugs per project and 25%. Nor the difference between able to fulfill a one sentence requirement with specific technical language vs needing ,"add this to that function and this to that function then make a configuration item to control it." And maybe all the shy smart coders aren't usable with some management styles and some great managers can coax excellent work out of all sort of people.

[anticensor]

Worse, not even owners are legally allowed to tell who is valuable, beyond a certain point