My last plea,

[Roy S. Rapoport]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2002, David Wolfskill wrote:
> Actually, I'll go rather further than that:  there will come a time, if
> the employing organization survives sufficiently long, when any given
> employee *must* be replaced.

I think I may go ahead and disagree with you on this point, David.

I'm fond of Accidental Empires' invasion analogy as a description for the
maturity stages of companies (SEAL -> Marines -> Army -> Civilian
Administration), and certainly agree that you don't want the SEALs that
started the company still in the same positions when the company is large
and established (e.g.:  Scarily enough, I'm the CFO of my company, in
addition to being an Account Manager, UNIX Engineer, Network Engineer,
Senior Coder, CIO, and Chief Bottle Washer.  This works because the
responsibilities of the CFO extend to, just about, nothing.  If this
company takes off the ground, it'd be insane to keep me in this position).

On the other hand, this doesn't mean that the people you found valuable
before can't be valuable now either by finding a different position for
them or by having them change.  People can make the SEAL -> Civilian
Administration transition (usually by going through the intermediate
steps).  Speaking as someone who at his last company went from "I can do
anything I want on the network because I'm the only engineer" to leading a
fairly conservative 18-person organization, I think I know of what I speak.

Companies, if they survive long enough, change.  People, if they want to
stay with these companies, change to fit the new needs of the company, or
they find somewhere else to work.  The employee/employer relationship, I
think, is more like serious dating than a marriage.

-roy