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That is by design. A person with complete knowlege is a liability. Workers should be replacable with minimal disruption. It's also less intellectual property to

• sanderjd 4y ago
  That's why you don't want one person with top-to-bottom knowledge, but not why you don't want many people with top-to-bottom knowledge.
  • krapp 4y ago
    You don't want many people with top-to-bottom knowledge because those people command higher salaries, and because most jobs don't require top-to-bottom knowledge, meaning those higher salaries wouldn't translate into commensurate value being returned to the company. Also people with top-to-bottom knowledge will tend to want to be promoted, and most won't (because employment is a pyramid, and also see the Gervais Principle) so you'll be left with a pool of frustrated, overpaid employees.
    • sanderjd 4y ago
      I think a decent rule of thumb might be to have three people with really deep holistic expertise. If there's so much context that it's hard for people to have and maintain that depth, then the organization is successful enough that it can afford to pay a premium for a few of them. And when one of them moves up or out, you have two more to pass on the knowledge to a new third. Maybe two or four or five would be fine too, but three seems to me like it might be about the optimum. But it's very risky to have either zero or one person who knows a system from top to bottom.