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An architect that doesn't leave documentation and share knowledge isn't doing their job and management needs to get ahead of this. What if this "key person" dec

An architect that doesn't leave documentation and share knowledge isn't doing their job and management needs to get ahead of this. What if this "key person" decides to find another job?

Aperocky 6y ago
Of course there's documentation, and also knowledge sharing, doesn't help he/she and 50% of his/her teammates are let go and without a solid way of knowledge transfer or the desire to do so under this context. This is especially bad for software that are written under tight deadline - no matter how much document you write about it. And sadly, there's more software that are written like that than otherwise.
Thrymr 6y ago
An architect that doesn't leave documentation and share knowledge might also be thinking about protecting his own job. Being irreplaceable is good job security.
- agakshat 6y ago
  I’ve always wondered, does this actually happen? People not getting fired because they are irreplaceable partly because of their own failure to document stuff?
  - Aperocky 6y ago
    Nobody except newcomers to the codebase look at documents on code structure, and of course no one is fired for not producing it/producing a crappy version of it. When the newcomer can't get anything out of that doc, if it exist, he/she just need to ask the creator, who will explain very nicely how everything is done, and that newcomer become a code guru in that codebase, and the cycle continues. Until you layoff 50% of the team and now suddenly nobody knows how 50% of the stuff work.
  - Hallucinaut 6y ago
    Very frequently in corporate environments, at least in investment banks I have known and heard of many people earning four figures a day pretty much purely because they've been allowed to carve their own niche that becomes indispensable. Ironically, the worse they are (think 5000 lines of Perl with two functions) then the less viable it is to replace them.

An architect that doesn't leave documentation and share knowledge isn't doing their job and management needs to get ahead of this. What if this "key person" decides to find another job?

Aperocky 6y ago

Of course there's documentation, and also knowledge sharing, doesn't help he/she and 50% of his/her teammates are let go and without a solid way of knowledge transfer or the desire to do so under this context. This is especially bad for software that are written under tight deadline - no matter how much document you write about it. And sadly, there's more software that are written like that than otherwise.

Thrymr 6y ago

An architect that doesn't leave documentation and share knowledge might also be thinking about protecting his own job. Being irreplaceable is good job security.

agakshat 6y ago
I’ve always wondered, does this actually happen? People not getting fired because they are irreplaceable partly because of their own failure to document stuff?
- Aperocky 6y ago
  Nobody except newcomers to the codebase look at documents on code structure, and of course no one is fired for not producing it/producing a crappy version of it. When the newcomer can't get anything out of that doc, if it exist, he/she just need to ask the creator, who will explain very nicely how everything is done, and that newcomer become a code guru in that codebase, and the cycle continues. Until you layoff 50% of the team and now suddenly nobody knows how 50% of the stuff work.
- Hallucinaut 6y ago
  Very frequently in corporate environments, at least in investment banks I have known and heard of many people earning four figures a day pretty much purely because they've been allowed to carve their own niche that becomes indispensable. Ironically, the worse they are (think 5000 lines of Perl with two functions) then the less viable it is to replace them.