Irreplaceable, in a Comically Bad Sense

Over at Ask a Manager, Alison Green presents her favorites from reader-submitted examples of broken (yet somehow also sacred) systems in the workplace.

Fourth on the list is a funny (and arguably criminal) example of someone who took advice like Make yourself indispensable in almost exactly the opposite way such advice is intended:

Image by Metroplitan Museum of Art, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

I work in museums. Another museum in our region had a staff member who kept all their crucial records -- important not just for day-to-day work, but for the continuity of the entire institution -- in a dead language that they were fluent in. It was a deliberate ploy to keep from ever being replaced. They had never actually been managed before a colleague of mine became their supervisor, and when they refused to change, they were let go and the records had to be translated.

It is astounding, and -- based on the commonality of certain similar pragmatism-influenced business practices -- perhaps something of a commentary on our culture and educational system, that someone with such a high level of expertise so fundamentally failed to understand what Ayn Rand named the trader principle.

The way to achieve what they call Bus Factor 1 in software is by continually producing at high quality or with very rare expertise, not by using one's knowledge to hold someone's property hostage.

-- CAV