this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
765 points (98.2% liked)
Technology
59653 readers
3247 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's pretty common for people to have specialized knowledge that's only in their heads. In the software biz it's pretty much assumed that losing an engineer means losing some important knowledge, too.
if the company is functioning properly this is absolutely not the case
I guess I've never worked for a company that functions properly, then. They must be pretty rare.
it's so rare that it basically only exists in well run companies and well run FOSS projects (which are few and far between)
We have daily meetings in the software team just to battle this
it is
They stopped existing when the relationship between companies and their employees became a directly adversarial one.
Even if absolutely everything is documented there is still the loss of familiarity and comfort working with a given system.
Having perfectly documented processes still might mean that a new engineer could take multiple hours following instructions to do what the person who originally built the system managed off the top of their head in fifteen minutes.
In these advanced and complex spaces loosing an employee and starting someone new is like starting a university degree. Shure, the knowledge exists and you can "just read the books". But that takes a fuckton of time in which the new guy is not productive AND needs someone else time to teach them.
So it's a really big loss.
documentation and knowledge sharing my dude
The ol' Bus Factor
HR told us we have to call it the Lottery Factor
Why? What's bad about busses?
Talking about your coworkers dying is generally frowned upon. Though it provides the clearest picture of John is gone, and not coming back.
Oh. Makes sense.