[notShabu]

There is a similar fallacy that I've seen many engineers & teams fall into. The occupy "critical" roles which without, the whole chain would break and everything would fall apart

However often times the project only needs that one critical role and can replace it fairly easily. (the on-ramp off-ramp costs are lower than the cost of redundancy or other political costs)

Ironically, "non-critical" roles can be more important from a business narrative or core competency pov.

E.g. "the AI expert/team" leaving breaks the narrative of being an AI company even if all they do is non-critical path exploratory research. The inability to get new hires breaks the narrative of a growth-company etc...

There is more leverage in being able to direct narrative energy than in being nominally critical

[klyrs]

> E.g. "the AI expert/team" leaving breaks the narrative of being an AI company even if all they do is non-critical path exploratory research.

I find myself in this position (but, not AI). That sole researcher doesn't just have "narrative" power. I make prototypes which are fleshed out into products by more capable engineers. Without me, the team is a bunch of engineers with great intuition on engineering and some familiarity with my niche -- but not the depth of knowledge required for keen intuition. The result would be either stagnation, or very inefficient research as an engineer attempts to step into the research role, hoping to accidentally rediscover decades of specialized knowledge.

An AI company without an AI just won't be able to execute at the pace of an AI company with that expert. And likewise, us niche experts don't go far without a solid engineering team to back us up.