this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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I had heard about these two patients years ago, and I still can't believe the doctor's death was this much of a set back. Did he write nothing down? Or did the company itself simply mismanage everything about this shit? This article makes it sound like the latter.
It's pretty common for people to have specialized knowledge that's only in their heads. In the software biz it's pretty much assumed that losing an engineer means losing some important knowledge, too.
The ol' Bus Factor
HR told us we have to call it the Lottery Factor
Why? What's bad about busses?
Talking about your coworkers dying is generally frowned upon. Though it provides the clearest picture of John is gone, and not coming back.
Oh. Makes sense.
if the company is functioning properly this is absolutely not the case
I guess I've never worked for a company that functions properly, then. They must be pretty rare.
it's so rare that it basically only exists in well run companies and well run FOSS projects (which are few and far between)
We have daily meetings in the software team just to battle this
Daily what? 😪
it is
They stopped existing when the relationship between companies and their employees became a directly adversarial one.
Even if absolutely everything is documented there is still the loss of familiarity and comfort working with a given system.
Having perfectly documented processes still might mean that a new engineer could take multiple hours following instructions to do what the person who originally built the system managed off the top of their head in fifteen minutes.
In these advanced and complex spaces loosing an employee and starting someone new is like starting a university degree. Shure, the knowledge exists and you can "just read the books". But that takes a fuckton of time in which the new guy is not productive AND needs someone else time to teach them.
So it's a really big loss.
documentation and knowledge sharing my dude
Oh shit where can I get a job with one those properly functioning companies? Because my job right now I got was because I was able to figure out on the interview what the guy before me was doing and the same thing happened with my previous employer.