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I don't believe the author is looking down on people who work on boring, critical systems. Rather, his point is that people who go _out of their way_ to hoard
by jiaweihli 9y ago
I don't believe the author is looking down on people who work on boring, critical systems.
Rather, his point is that people who go _out of their way_ to hoard knowledge on ancient systems and make themselves critical are people you want to avoid. As a single point of anecdata, the best engineers I know want to democratize information - they hate tribal knowledge because it creates a point of failure and bottleneck in the Keeper of the Tribal Knowledge.
- watwut 9y agoThere was not a single mention of refusal to share information nor refusal to document. Just that they assume responsibilities others don't want do and that they work on critical systems. Going out your way to learn about systems that needs to be maintained is a good thing (if that is hoarding). I want team full of people who are like that.
- jiaweihli 9y agoThe original post specifically calls out hoarding: > On the other hand, the unskilled tend to have a slightly different curve: Value Convergence. They eventually settle into a position of mediocrity and stay there indefinitely. The only reason their value does not decrease is because the vast amount of institutional knowledge they hoard and create. The quote you're addressing (from another article) is also qualified in the original source, under "Responses to comments" / "Not everyone ‘left behind’ is incompetent": http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-effect/ http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-d...