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Comment by dasil003 | Hacker News Reader

You are disposable though, everyone is. It's generally a losing game to try to cement your position by playing gatekeeper on institutional knowledge, because at best it will prevent you from ever being promoted, and at worst will peg you as a single-point-of-failure liability that needs to be dealt with proactively. I understand this sort of defensive posture might make sense in some companies/situations, but the article is clearly talking about software engineers in large upwardly mobile companies. In those situations it's essential to have a non-adversarial and trusting relationship with your boss, if you don't trust your boss than that's the first thing to address by any means necessary.

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I was on a team of 2 and underpaid for my YOE. My boss gave me the standard speech about the company not having the money to increase my comp, and said the company wouldn't be able to counteroffer anything I interviewed for.

I was doing interview prep and my coworker gave notice. I told my boss the range I was interviewing for, and got a comp adjustment the next day. It was a 60% raise.

If I were you I would have left that place even with the raise, or stuck around just long enough for me to get another opportunity. Clearly they don't value you unless you force they hand. Why stick around for that?

My approach to interviewing was basically reject any companies paying under X, and slowly increase X over time as I got practice interviewing with the easier companies. I was only interviewing with one company that could pay X, and they didn't end up giving me the offer.

I like my coworkers and the work I'm doing, but mainly my current company came in with the highest offer.

I got a significant raise lately because I was a single point of failure.

I was in this situation many times. You'll see the reality of it the day you leave: in a few days, maybe a month, you'll be forgotten there.

When I leave, that corporation is no longer my problem :)

This also has happened to me multiple times.

And to the comments saying the employer could "replace you any time" - most cases, they just don't know how to do so, or have the time and money to do so.

This strange article teaches you to do your employer's job by making it easier to replace you.

Agree, that's why I think the article was written by a manager that lost some key people and he is in big trouble.

Meaning your employer now has all the more reason to replace you as soon as an opportunity presents itself

They can. But it would be very expensive to replace more than 20 years of domain experience.

It would probably be a lot more expensive to replace more than 20 years of domain experience immediately because you quit to go work at rand($FAANG).

Exactly this. If you are a single point of failure knowledge silo, the business sees you as a liability since if you decide to quit, their business is then screwed. This is why turning yourself into a silo is making yourself disposable - it gives the employer a very good reason to try and find an alternative to continuing their reliance on you.

I agree, meanwhile they prefer giving me a raise than start looking for backup or replacement

Why does one exclude the other?

short term, it cost more to bring a backup/replacement than give me a raise.

Not "if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code."

https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~susan/475/unmain.html

I don't think OP is advocating making yourself SoP. I think what OP is saying, is that you should not waste your precious mental effort or free time to unmake yourself as SoP for the company, unless you're tasked to do so and paid for it. I.e. if it's in your job description that you'll be documenting all the things, then you'll do it, on paid time.

I see it as downside protection.

If I want a promotion, there are other companies.

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