If, like me, you’ve been trapped in The Snowstorm That Ate the MidAtlantic this past week, you’ve probably spent most of your time indoors, glued to the non-stop news coverage of this Most Amazing Calamity.  And you’ve noticed that the endless loop of school, church and government office closings is occasionally interrupted by the one message all employees dread seeing during a blizzard:

Essential employees must report.

“Poor bastards,” you think to yourself, shaking your head as you solemnly paw another chocolate-covered donut from the swiftly-dwindling bag.  Sucks to be them.  Sucks to be “essential,” which means the company can’t run without you, so you have to brave the elements and risk your own life and limb in order to keep the operation afloat.  I hope they think it’s worth it.

And then something else occurs to you:

“Why am I not essential?”

I used to work in a company that created multimedia products.  My manager was the guy in charge of programming each month’s new release, and he wisely ensured that only he knew how to do it.  Why?  Because that made him essential.  The company couldn’t produce its product line without him, and if they ever wanted to fire him, they’d need to replace him and the system he’d put in place, which was more hassle than the owners were likely to embrace.

Of course, the downside is that he could never really take a vacation because no one else in the company could solve any of the tech problems that came up when he was away.  But what he lacked in autonomy, he gained in longevity within the company.  Not a bad way to indefinitely ensure your own job security, privacy be damned.

Meanwhile, my friend Joel Mark Witt works in the marketing office at the Maryland Public Zoo.  Having seen numerous news updates that “essential zoo employees” had to report on time all week, I asked Joel if that included him.  He said no, that only applied to the employees who care for the animals, and that the keepers had been “sleeping/living there since Friday to take care of all the creatures.”

In other words, the people without whom the zoo could not actually function were required to leave their own families during a weather crisis and tend to those who can’t fend for themselves: the animals, who depend on the keepers for their daily survival.

Compared to that pressure, most of us would gladly opt for a “non-essential” job elsewhere in the company — even if it came with the subconscious knowledge that, if push came to shove, we’d ultimately be expendable.

No One Ever Says “I Want to Be Expendable When I Grow Up”

Would you want to be essential?  Maybe not.  Maybe you like being able to turn your phone off when you’re on vacation, or staying at home during a blizzard.  And for the vast majority of us, that seems entirely logical.  Not everyone wants to be the linchpin of an organization, asked to bear the ultimate responsibility for that company’s success or failure.

But sometimes a snowstorm has a funny way of reminding us that the jobs we spend 40+ hours a week performing are considered “non-essential” by the very people who pay us to do them.

And sometimes a recession proves it.

So maybe we should put down our donuts and find a way to do something that matters.

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  • http://www.cad.cx Colin Dean

    Expendable, or mobile?

    Programmers face this moral problem frequently.

    Does one Do It Right, and code something to that it’s maintainable and workable should they disappear? Or Do It Wrong, and code something so complex that it would take man-years to understand it let alone improve upon it?

    The Daily WTF posted an article in 2008 called Up or Out: Solving the IT turnover crisis. The article applies to both IT and software developers and designers. I read this article in December 2008 and it was just one of the sources which influenced me to change jobs two months later.

    In short, there’s a value apex for skilled workers looking for upward mobility, and there’s a value convergence for skilled workers looking for job security. The apex is the point at which the company generally values the worker more than the worker values the job. The convergence is a point of entanglement; the company and the worker value each other the same and could not be easily separated without causing the other much strife.

    Are folks who are essential to a business’s operation looking for career progress? Is that how they measure a successful career? I think that’s up to the individual. Some would define success as working for the same place for 44 years and retiring with a generous pension or other retirement income source other than Social Security. Others would define success as contributing to the product of many companies, while learning something along the way. Others would have different requirements.

    Do I want to be essential to my company? Sure. But if I care for the success of the company, I have to do my job in a way that if a PAT bus decides it wants a face-first hug, the company can continue to operate without spinning its wheels trying to figure out code for months. If I don’t care for the company–”It’s just a job”–then why would I want to be essential? I would want to be able to move at a moments notice, and wouldn’t care about leaving the company high and dry. Maybe folks are like that. I’m not. It would be the company’s fault, then, for hiring someone sketchy and not ensuring that they are doing their job correctly. Lesson learned.

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  • http://www.3hatscommunications.com/blog/ Davina K. Brewer

    Loved your “holding all the keys” story; worked too many places where people tried to make themselves termination-proof by seeming essential, being the “only one” who can do the job. Yes it’s nice to be valuable and valued, essential. But remember the wise words of Despair.com: “Just because you’re necessary, doesn’t mean you’re important.”

    Colin makes a good point about some jobs being mobile or portable. Depending on the job, telecommuting can handle some essential functions. It also depends on the nature of the business. A law practice can probably shut down if the courts, cases and everything else are also delayed for a week, get continuances, etc; A hospital can’t do that. I know an RN who accepts her roles as a 1st responder, knows she has to report no matter what when called. FWIW.

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