The Big Work Lie: Being Indispensable Will Save Your Job

It’s career advice we’ve all heard: Make yourself indispensable. Many who thought they’d accomplished that goal have been burned in recent white-collar layoffs .

Jilted workers and others who’ve witnessed job cuts say there’s no such thing as an irreplaceable employee. Some contend striving to be untouchable at work can backfire or invite exploitation. You can naively do more than what’s required, thinking effort means job security, then get axed anyway.

That disillusionment is fuelling debate over the wisdom of pursuing indispensability, often along generational lines. Older workers recount times when they survived rounds of job cuts by being too skilful or versatile to let go, while their younger counterparts tend to share examples of great performances that yielded no protection.

Beth McLaughlin McDonald , 52, is a recent convert to the more cynical side.

Though she’d endured three layoffs over the years, she still believed it was possible to become bulletproof when she took a recruiting job in 2022. Working remotely in Savannah, Ga., she was promoted quickly and felt she made her team at a healthcare-technology startup better by shouldering tasks that used to bog down others.

“I truly thought I was indispensable,” McLaughlin McDonald says.

She discovered she wasn’t when the company downsized last year. In less than an hour her department was slashed from 13 employees to three, she says. Each affected person was given notice in a five-minute video call. McLaughlin McDonald now thinks nobody is ever safe, so she works several part-time jobs, believing it’s wise to have multiple income streams in case one dries up.

It isn’t that the labor market is in a rout. The national unemployment rate remains at 3.9% and hiring exceeded economists’ predictions in the latest jobs report. Instead, two other factors drive workers’ pessimism: the march of artificial intelligence and the way cuts are handled .

I hear constantly from people who worry that AI-powered tools threaten positions that seemed secure a short time ago. Now that pink slips are frequently doled out virtually, in emails or on Zoom, many workers question whether they were truly valued in the first place.

Managers counter that workers’ job hopping in recent years, though slowing , means savvy leadership includes minimising a business’s dependence on individuals.

Some bosses say they strategically prevent employees from becoming irreplaceable. It isn’t sabotage, they insist. Rather, being overly reliant on their best team members is risky.

So if you sense a higher-up is trying to limit your importance, your gut might be right.

Too indispensable for anyone’s good

The veterinary technician was good at her job. Debbie Boone fired her anyway.

Boone managed veterinary clinics in the Carolinas for two decades before becoming an independent consultant and says she sometimes dismissed talented employees who hoarded knowledge to make themselves more valuable. She recalls this particular tech went further, stashing equipment manuals and implements in a private drawer.

“It was enhancing her status, but it was diminishing us as a whole,” she says.

Employees shouldn’t try to be indispensable, in Boone’s view. Being the only person with certain skills or information might feel like insurance. But it can lead to selfishness—and a surprise ouster by a boss who prefers team players.

Avin Kline , chief executive of the cannabis marketing agency Lucyd in Florida, says he expects most of his 55 employees to spend two to five years with the company. Understanding that turnover is inevitable, and perhaps imminent, he guards against individuals becoming essential.

Each client account has a point person, but those employees are required to share notes and reports with colleagues so that someone else can step in if needed. The idea: No account manager should be so important that a client would take its business elsewhere if the primary contact left the agency.

“When we have to replace someone, I want to feel that we’re losing somebody that’s providing a lot of value,” Kline says. “But I don’t want my business or myself to freak out.”

From irreplaceable to obsolete

Shannon Howard argues indispensability remains an ideal worth pursuing. The content-marketing director at a software company made that case recently to a group of college students near her home in North Carolina, urging them to resist the “ act your wage ” sentiment that drives many young workers, and others, to withhold extra effort.

At 31, Howard says she gets it. At-will employees can go above and beyond and get canned anyway, so why bother?

Still, “I’ve seen times when being the person who does their best, with a good attitude, saves someone’s neck,” she says. “At minimum, it builds a positive reputation and can help get another job.”

Jim Moechnig , laid off by a data-storage company in November, is still waiting for 17 years of service and good karma to be reciprocated.

He devoted nearly his entire tenure to a single software line, building unsurpassed institutional knowledge. Rather than irreplaceable, he says he came to be seen as one-dimensional.

When sales of his software slowed, his role was eliminated and job prospects for his narrow specialty were limited. Moechnig, 46, is working toward additional tech certifications that he hopes will yield new opportunities remotely or locally in Minnesota.

With several months to process his job loss, he takes a coolly objective view of the situation. His team was full of smart, hardworking people, but the business needed to cut costs. Ability provided no protection.

“If they were going to cut somebody, they were going to cut somebody good,” he says.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

The Big Work Lie: Being Indispensable Will Save Your Job

Becoming the only staffer with certain skills might feel like insurance. To some bosses, it’s a red flag.

Too indispensable for anyone’s good

From irreplaceable to obsolete

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.