Are You Fungible In Your Career? (You Don’t Want To Be)

In 2008, I read Bloomberg Businessweek‘s article entitled “Management by the Numbers” in which they review how IBM has been building mathematical models of its own employees with an aim to improve productivity and automate management. I’ll let you read it and draw your own conclusions, but I realized that this article still rings true today.

After reading this article so many years ago, I learned a new workplace term that they’re using over at IBM. “Fungible” is a word used to describe workers who are “virtually indistinguishable from others” in terms of the value of their contributions in the workplace.

You see, IBM’s study is enabling them to identify top performers from average ones, with the latter being fungible—and I would assume that translates into expendable as well. In a time where layoffs continue to make the headlines, I guarantee management teams all over the country are getting in rooms and saying, “Who’s fungible on the payroll right now?”

Okay, so they are most likely not using the term—but they are having that discussion, I assure you.