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In the book Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin [0], she mentions that there was one member of the LIGO project who became the "go to" person for any technical disc

In the book Black Hole Blues by Janna Levin [0], she mentions that there was one member of the LIGO project who became the "go to" person for any technical discussions because they had memorized large parts of the infrastructure. Having memorized it, they could quickly "debug" issues and evaluate proposed changes. The implication was that asking the individual was faster than having to get together multiple people and then poll them for what they thought the answer might be. In my own career, I've spent the last 15 years working in finance technology. Many of the systems involved in this industry are legacy (with lots of patches), complex and distributed with all of the attached problems that come with them. Multiple times over that, I've seen people with excellent memories and understanding of the system be able to pinpoint problems just by taking a couple symptoms and deducing the root cause in a few minutes. It really can be a superpower. The one down side of course is that you build this great mental model for a system that only ever exists at one firm. This can lead the situation where you become more valuable to the firm over time as fewer people remain who understand the system. In turn, your opportunity cost of leaving goes up because you would have to start from zero at your next job. [0] - https://amzn.to/3lkSfmu https://amzn.to/3lkSfmu

brianpan 6y ago
I don't think that's a downside. If you have that superpower, you can build it at a different place. The downside I find is that some people who can do this assume everyone can do this. If complexity is not difficult for you then simplifying (code, architecture, etc.) is not a priority and it becomes harder for other people to understand and maintain.
- mr_overalls 6y ago
  I'm the the go-to guy at a small government agency for the overall network/system architecture. There are some technical & memory-related prereqs (i.e. I have a CS degree, and I'm not a dummy), but mainly I know our systems so well because I've worked actively on them for more than a decade. It would probably take me a decade to build such a detailed mental model at another company or agency. And that's even assuming I could get hired. One consequence of working on an idiosyncratic, one-off architecture is that my mainstream tech skills have atrophied significantly. I definitely could not pass a leet-code interview at a FAANG anymore.
  - eric-hu 6y ago
    Don’t write your future self off so easily. Now you know first hand how deeply and broadly you can learn a system. If life put you into a completely different system, you could build this familiarity and mental map faster. I bet you could—with careful thought—learn in 3-4 years what you learned in 10, and in your first year what you learned in your first 5.

brianpan 6y ago

I don't think that's a downside. If you have that superpower, you can build it at a different place. The downside I find is that some people who can do this assume everyone can do this. If complexity is not difficult for you then simplifying (code, architecture, etc.) is not a priority and it becomes harder for other people to understand and maintain.

mr_overalls 6y ago
I'm the the go-to guy at a small government agency for the overall network/system architecture. There are some technical & memory-related prereqs (i.e. I have a CS degree, and I'm not a dummy), but mainly I know our systems so well because I've worked actively on them for more than a decade. It would probably take me a decade to build such a detailed mental model at another company or agency. And that's even assuming I could get hired. One consequence of working on an idiosyncratic, one-off architecture is that my mainstream tech skills have atrophied significantly. I definitely could not pass a leet-code interview at a FAANG anymore.
- eric-hu 6y ago
  Don’t write your future self off so easily. Now you know first hand how deeply and broadly you can learn a system. If life put you into a completely different system, you could build this familiarity and mental map faster. I bet you could—with careful thought—learn in 3-4 years what you learned in 10, and in your first year what you learned in your first 5.