Why You Don’t Want to Be Irreplaceable

1. Your skills become less marketable

If you spend years working with an obscure codebase, your skills become less relevant. You aren’t working with popular open-source frameworks. You might even work with a programming language that’s becoming less and less popular.

Companies want to hire people who have relevant experience. Experience developing features in a homemade framework isn’t relevant. Why hire someone who has only worked with jQuery, when I can hire someone who has two years of React experience?

Working with the same tools as potential employers increases your marketability.

2. Your work relationships will sour

Maintaining good relationships with your colleagues is hard when you hoard information. An irreplaceable programmer will often bend or break the rules that others follow. They often see themselves as above their colleagues. They are often difficult to work with and only want to do things their way. They won’t listen to feedback.

To go back to the example from my former internship, the programmer in question saw himself as above the rest of us. He would show up late and leave early. When you asked him for help, he would prefer to code for you instead of explaining his solution. He was terrible at onboarding new teammates.

Management noticed but chose to look the other way because of how vital he was to the organization. The rest of us felt like second-class employees, and morale suffered.

Instead of hoarding information, share it. Instead of coding for your teammates, pair-program. Instead of making up your own rules, follow them. This will make you more liked. It will allow you to not only teach your coworkers but learn from them.

3. It makes it harder to step away

If you have made yourself irreplaceable, then it’s hard to take sick days and vacations. If you don’t share knowledge about your part of the application, then nobody can help you. If there’s a problem, then you will be stuck fixing it. And if you aren’t available when disaster strikes, then the blame will fall on your shoulders.

4. It stops your career growth

If you are irreplaceable in your current position, why would your boss ever give you a promotion?

Let’s go for a more concrete example. John has worked for ten years at the same company as a PHP engineer. When John started at the company, they had one product. It was a poorly documented monolith that was very difficult to work with. John worked hard and made himself an expert in working with the monolith.

Over the past ten years, the company evolved and created new and exciting products. They started using more modern technologies and frameworks.

John’s coworkers got the opportunity to work with those more modern products, but not John. John’s supervisor knew he would be difficult to replace if they moved him off his project.

Some of John’s coworkers got promoted, others left the company for new jobs at higher pay. But John stayed behind. When he finally starting looking for a new job, he found it hard. In the last ten years, the industry had evolved. It had left him behind.

5. Believing you are irreplaceable gives you a false sense of security

We work hardest when we are working for something. If we know we are irreplaceable, we tend to become complacent. We start taking longer lunches. Arriving later, and leaving earlier.

Even if you are irreplaceable, there are many ways you can still lose your job. What if the company goes bankrupt? Or the product you are working on loses market share? Or if your company decides to outsource its development to a low-cost area?

Face it, there’s no such thing as true job security. Instead of investing in your job, you should invest in yourself. Develop your interpersonal skills by working together with your colleagues. Learn new skills and work with market-leading technology.

Prepare yourself, and when you do lose your job, you will have no trouble finding a new one.