4 ms·

My opinion is that for a couple of years companies were able to coast on the retained employee knowledge while remote. However as people leave the company or n

My opinion is that for a couple of years companies were able to coast on the retained employee knowledge while remote. However as people leave the company or new people join, it is pretty difficult to ramp people up to be as effective as their replacements. I don’t work at Google so maybe everyone who works there is a genius, but I’ve noticed this at my work where it takes quite a long time for people to be 100% effective and it’s mostly because people have meetings and other obligations that make it challenging to bring ppl up to speed.

ThalesX 5y ago
Anecdotal. My best friend, about 5 - 6 years ago was doing manual labor, hauling plastics around town basically. He had a break and found a tech support job. Progressed to level 1 then 2, then he started working (pre-COVID) as a sys admin. During COVID, he changed his job once to also sys admin, and just recently, he managed to land a DevOps job. He's now working with new people, new technologies, new infrastructures, new everything, and is praised for his onboarding speed; which I can attest to. Why did I write this entire story? I think it's about people more than institutional knowledge. I know my friend is smart and driven, and no matter what you'll throw at him, he'll somehow find a way to adapt and improve. There's also an argument against stale institutional knowledge. Ultimately, I think being agile as a company is a greater advantage than institutional knowledge, so I'm biased.