> refused to let me move for a promotion because I was "indispensable" and "critical to the project".
So would they rather have you quit? If not they should be willing to give you whatever title, pay bump, time off, etc. is necessary to keep you long enough for a replacement solution to be found. Otherwise if you just quit they’re stuck negotiating from a position of weakness to hire you back as a much higher paid contractor, or if you decide to take an extended vacation or work somewhere else they are left high and dry.
If you are truly “indispensable”, that makes you the one with all of the leverage. If they can jerk you around without pushback, then “indispensable” sounds more like a rhetorical device / excuse.
> So would they rather have you quit? If not they should be willing to [...]
I know that many folks here work in elite organizations, so maybe it's hard to fathom, but THE NORM for big companies is to be dumb as a box of rocks when it comes to organizational stuff and technical operations.
Talented people who are intrinsically cross-functional, curious, and who always to do what it takes to "help the team" often get hammered flat from years of the daily grind-stone and then just quit, like the OP.
In most places no one is even thinking about "retaining talent" until it's far too late.
Retaining talent conversations feel much like people who show up to AA after the liver disease diagnosis. They didn’t think it would happen to them, they didn’t look at it, and their sudden conversion is a rear-guard action, closing the barn door after the horses have gotten out.
If your bosses are saying “retention” out loud you are probably already fucked, even if your division seems to be doing okay.
So would they rather have you quit? If not they should be willing to give you whatever title, pay bump, time off, etc.
For large enough companies the 'company' is not a single unit making unified decisions. I might be "indispensable" to my boss, perhaps his boss, the project, and my department. However they don't have the power to give me a pay rise or extra time off outside the normal bounds set by their bosses. Me, my boss or even my department however aren't indispensable to the whole global multinational company we all work for.
If I quit and the project fails, then my boss and several people on that project might lose their jobs, and the remnants of that department might end up folded into some other department. My bosses boss might not get a nice bonus that year due to the fact that the project he was overseeing was a massive failure. However "The Company" and it's tens of thousands of other employees all around the world will keep on trucking as if nothing had happened.
To add on, it is a lot better story to tell during behavioral interviews:
“I was hired by the Director to solve $x problem. I led the project. I put processes in place. I led training for the team and they went public a year later. I met my former director for lunch a year later and most of my processes are still there in a slightly evolved form.”
About the same as above from my job after that. But change “Director” to “CTO” and change “went public” to “got acquired for 10x revenue”.
(Yes I can draw a direct line from the architectural changes that let them pivot to selling access to micro services to their value proposition when acquired)
> However they don't have the power to give me a pay rise or extra time off outside the normal bounds set by their bosses.
Maybe. But - maybe they just follow the path of least resistance, which is to lean on you rather than go up to their bosses and say "John Smith is quitting, and when he does, this project will crash and burn. We must stop this or the company will lose $$$."
> my department however aren't indispensable to the whole global multinational company we all work for.
Some of that is wishful thinking on their part. They can’t acknowledge that the riffraff keep the wheels on and may swing the other way as a form of denial. They probably treat waiters like shit too.
It is very clear that bosses have had good luck bluffing or calling other people’s bluffs and many just do it as a matter of course. I bet you won’t quit over a 5% discrepancy in pay, and I’ll just ratchet that up every review period, and hope you don’t notice when that climbs to 10% under market.
It’s kind of the same game landlords play. I always find it somewhat amusing when a landlord forces a business out of a storefront and then the storefront sits empty for six months or a year. How long is it going to take you to break even on that?
Lots of commercial buildings are passed down from generations. You don't know how to think like them. They have the building its been generating money and they have lots of money so they don't care. They want toy X that costs $XXXX per month if the tenant leaves they don't get the toy and they lose the rent they don't need to live anyway. If the tenant stays they get the toy. Otherwise they don't care cause they are good financially. You would be amazed how man "business" decisions are made based on the basis of if it buys the owner the toy they want.
Toy is just a euphemism. It could be a service, it could be just showing up their friend jimmy that they made more money this year. IT could be to win a bet. IT could be the tenant scratched their Bently. It could be that somebody they don't like frequents the establishment.
For storefronts specifically, and depending on the country you're talking about, there's more likely than not an attempt to evade or avoid tax. For example, this is exactly why tourist attractions like Oxford Street in London are full of American Candy stores now. They'll be there for a few months and then be gone: the landlord saves on business rates because they'd found a tenant, and the actual company vanishes without having paid the rates they were responsible for.
In that case, it's beneficial to the landlord to have some scam shop in because even if they're not being paid rent, the money they're saving from an occupied storefront easily outweighs every other alternative.
I would argue that exercising such leverage is not only for benefit of the indispensable but also for the organizations which are often inert unless enough initiative is given.
Indispensability (true or perceived) hurts not only person but organization as a whole. It creates tension between them, which might break at any point for any reason (a bus, reaching point of no return, dragging organization down) and create difficult to fill void once that happens.
I think it should, however, be considered from the true indispensability and not the perceived one. Perceived one is bullying employees, accidentally or on purpose. Sometimes it's bullying ourselves by creating overly controlled environment that solidified over years.
In perfect life scenario utilizing leverage would work as following: The Indispensable ask for a minor raise (1-5%) -> Company agrees, because The Indispensable is truly indispensable -> 1 month passes -> Repeat
After couple iterations there would be a break point because company will start to weight options and might decide to compensate instead of waiting for next month and another raise request. In this scenario The Indispensable stops being one, so their quality of work improves (less stress) and they get additional income. Company retains The Indispensable since they signaled and through adequate pressure achieved the goal. Fragile process with single point of failure is resolved with more stable solution.
Unfortunately it doesn't work in real life often. Some companies simply can't afford matching expectations, no matter how warranted they are. Indispensability there is simply a tax imposed on worker. Some people aren't confident and courageous enough to bring issues out and try to act on them (as business can be intimidating). Last and not least - true indispensability isn't black or white. There's a mixture of politics, perceived indispensability, true indispensability and controlling behavior by The Indispensable one.
So would they rather have you quit? If not they should be willing to give you whatever title, pay bump, time off, etc. is necessary to keep you long enough for a replacement solution to be found. Otherwise if you just quit they’re stuck negotiating from a position of weakness to hire you back as a much higher paid contractor, or if you decide to take an extended vacation or work somewhere else they are left high and dry.
If you are truly “indispensable”, that makes you the one with all of the leverage. If they can jerk you around without pushback, then “indispensable” sounds more like a rhetorical device / excuse.