I'm not sure this is a reliable guide. I'm in academia, and the people who really can't be replaced are the administrative staff with hard-won institutional knowledge and connections--but they're valued far less than splashy big-name faculty with no institutional loyalty.
Ask them all to take a month off and see which has greater impact and over which timescales.
Usefulness and value have different dimensions that can be orthogonal or even in opposition to one another. Many of us have worked in the presence of brilliant assholes and had to ponder that question.
I agree. It sounds like lack of documented processes and leadership oversight have made that corner of the organization a kind of personal fiefdom of the administrative staff.
> I agree. It sounds like lack of documented processes and leadership oversight have made that corner of the organization a kind of personal fiefdom of the administrative staff.
There are lots of problems with the way universities are set up, but, from the point of view of a faculty member and, I suspect, also that of a student, "more leadership oversight" would solve none of them. (Unless it was accompanied by a change of university leadership from those who think of a university primarily as a business, to those who think of a university primarily as a university. I have only spent a long time at one university, so it is possible that this problem is peculiar to my university, but my impression from talking to my colleagues is that it is not.)
> They can’t be fired, but if they stop bringing in grants, they can face steep pay cuts and lab closure.
This describes the situation of tenured faculty (who are definitely who I had in mind when I referred to splashy big names), but universities have long been moving to a model with as few tenured or tenurable faculty as possible, where some instructors are full time but non-tenure-track, and others are part time (and so, for example, don't have to be paid benefits). At my university these are called lecturers and adjuncts, but other names exist. Both jobs involve renewable contracts (of different lengths), so they need not even be fired, just not have their contracts renewed.
