What Makes You Replaceable?
My partner forwarded me an email from a frustrated, long-term client a few years ago.
The client had been working with a team of mobile engineers for a couple of weeks, but the team sent crappy reports. They were either diving into unnecessary details, almost explaining file-level changes, or after it was pointed out that the reports were too detailed, they sent something like: “Everything’s fine”.
The client wasn’t satisfied with any of these versions.
Developing software isn’t cheap. If you’re investing money and outsourcing the implementation, you want to know what’s happening. Not like I’m changing this if into a switch on line 90, but more like, we fixed the issue with responsiveness on the first onboarding screen.
Still frustrated, the client reached out to my boss and mentioned he was getting exemplary reports from me while we worked together. My boss asked if we could take advantage of this, so I came up with a solution.
For 5 days, the mobile team sent me the reports as they thought they should look, and I edited them. I sent the edited version to the client and the team. The process was so effective that on the 5th day, I told them, you can send this directly to the client. They kept me in bcc for a few more days to ensure things went smoothly, but I never had to edit any of their reports.
What seemed like a walk in the park to me saved us from losing a frustrated client.
Talking to clients effectively and proving that I can teach others to do the same put me in a different place at this company.
I was hired as a React engineer, but this is how I expanded my imaginary box.
Now let’s talk about boxes.
The combinatorics of human DNA are staggering.
It’s our choice to stay replaceable.
When you apply for a job, you’re looking for a box labeled with jQuery/CSS and think: ”Hey, that’s my box! Fun!”.
This is how most of us - including me - were looking for our first job.
But staying in a box that was strategically built is the perfect way to become replaceable.
Let’s say you were good at jQuery, but suddenly the company is not interested in it anymore. Vue is what they want, but you don’t like Vue. You’d rather do React. The problem is that nobody cares. You can either learn it or look for a different job.
When the business looks for a replacement, they now simply label the box Vue/CSS instead of jQuery/CSS.
Too bad.
You could gradually expand your box with skills that bring value to the company. At some point, this box of yours becomes so big that replacing you would be costly or impossible to do in a reasonable time.1
Usually, you have two ways to go about expanding your box.
Fill it up with new tech skills or with soft skills2.
If you pick the hard-skill route, you’ll create this burden of constantly staying on top of tech. Even if you become good at a thing (it was Backbone.js for me in 2014), if it’s irrelevant to the company and they can’t be influenced, you can’t do much. It’s a hit or miss.
Soft skills, on the other hand, are for a lifetime. Learn once to communicate well, understand requirements, business problems, and negotiate a price with a client. Those will be skills to hone and benefit from your entire life, regardless of company, industry, or current trends in the tech space.
We’re indeed replaceable, but only if we play by the rules set by others.
Settle into a comfy little box, and do as you were told.
Or, challenge your box and beliefs and show the company you’re capable of much more than they hired you for.
I walked both roads, and while the second can lead to more conflicts, taking the blame and standing up for your beliefs3, it also offers more rewards in the long run.
Although I only worked for a few small companies before I started freelancing and launched my agency, there wasn’t one where I did only what I was told to do.
The last company I worked for was heavy on JSF and Java technologies until I gradually started to influence them with JavaScript and showed how it speeds up development time and has a better DX.
They now sell JavaScript-based solutions to financial institutions.
Please don’t bash me about the term, everyone knows what this means.
…and eventually being fired or voluntarily leaving.
Nice topic and a very relevant one for anyone who wants to grow in their career.
IMO Everyone is replaceable. Some are harder to replace than others - Why? As you noted in your essay, soft skills like communication, critical thinking, bias for action, able to influence others makes someone harder to replace.