2 ms·

IMO the only way to achieve that is to inform the business about it. If they are aware that knowledge is being lost and then has to be re-acquired by the next p

IMO the only way to achieve that is to inform the business about it. If they are aware that knowledge is being lost and then has to be re-acquired by the next person then I think that a lot of business people immediately grok the idea that not writing docs is a liability and a risk and that it makes swapping people hugely expensive (indirectly, due to you being paid just to catch up for a while). Businessmen get this stuff quite well. But I feel very often nobody explains them the situation.

__jem 6y ago
Yeah, I agree that business people are often quite receptive when you lay it out in terms of economic impact. I agree that this is a skill all devs should work on -- even just being able to talk about orders of magnitude of $ in your estimates is incredibly helpful. But I've often found other devs can be your worst enemy here -- they rely on esoteric knowledge to build defensible moats around their seniority. Harder to convince execs about firing their "star" 10xer. Ultimately, this is why I think we need compiler assistance so that stuff like docs can be enforced in CI unilaterally.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > they rely on esoteric knowledge to build defensible moats around their seniority Sadly you are correct. Job security and thus gatekeeping are the higher priority. So yeah, yet another case of perverse incentives. :( > Ultimately, this is why I think we need compiler assistance so that stuff like docs can be enforced in CI unilaterally. Completely agreed, plus declarative programming. At 41 I am already sick to my stomach about having to manually write boilerplate. Tooling helps only a little and is hugely overrated; so what if the tool generates skeleton controllers et. al.? 90% of what you know should be there is yours to do anyway. But that's a huge tangent. :)

2 ms·

IMO the only way to achieve that is to inform the business about it. If they are aware that knowledge is being lost and then has to be re-acquired by the next p

by pdimitar 6y ago

__jem 6y ago
Yeah, I agree that business people are often quite receptive when you lay it out in terms of economic impact. I agree that this is a skill all devs should work on -- even just being able to talk about orders of magnitude of $ in your estimates is incredibly helpful. But I've often found other devs can be your worst enemy here -- they rely on esoteric knowledge to build defensible moats around their seniority. Harder to convince execs about firing their "star" 10xer. Ultimately, this is why I think we need compiler assistance so that stuff like docs can be enforced in CI unilaterally.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  > they rely on esoteric knowledge to build defensible moats around their seniority Sadly you are correct. Job security and thus gatekeeping are the higher priority. So yeah, yet another case of perverse incentives. :( > Ultimately, this is why I think we need compiler assistance so that stuff like docs can be enforced in CI unilaterally. Completely agreed, plus declarative programming. At 41 I am already sick to my stomach about having to manually write boilerplate. Tooling helps only a little and is hugely overrated; so what if the tool generates skeleton controllers et. al.? 90% of what you know should be there is yours to do anyway. But that's a huge tangent. :)