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by 0x008 1605 days ago
> I've found that a lot of people are really proprietary about documentation, (not even getting to architecture yet) and treat their time spent documenting as time spent giving away their negotiating leverage.

I have observed this also. I’ve even had colleagues voicing this explicitly to me. However, I think it is a little bit near sighted. A good manager will never assume documentation can replace a senior developer who helped build the system from the ground up. However, a bad manager might make this mistake.

But in reality I feel like there are two types of companies. The ones that understand that the experienced developers are their true capital and so everything to keep those with experience - and the ones who live under the illusion that they can substitute individual people with processes and organizational structure. Those will also let good people go instead of paying them what they are worth, because of “compliance” reasons or company policies and will pay a multitude of what the extra salary was in lost time and burned hours afterwards when the people who come after try to understand the ins and outs of the legacy system.