[guestbest]

Even important people aren’t compensated based on their importance but their marketability. Also, pay is usually just enough to prevent employees from leaving to a competing jobs. Too much institutional knowledge can ironically leave an employee uncompetitive in the market.

[7thaccount]

Agree. Institutional knowledge is vastly underrated. A lot of jobs exist where the knowledge IS the employee value and not just some crank-turning process that can be taught to someone in a few months. It can take years to adequately understand an organization's tools, software architecture, customers, what works and what doesn't...etc.