[freedomben]

Indeed, I've seen this happen first hand where there was really only one guy who really "knew" Kafka, and it was too big of a job for just him. In that case it was fine until he left the company, and then it became a massive albatross and a major pain point. In another case, the eng team didn't really have anyone who really "knew" Kafka but used a managed service thinking it would be fine. It was until it wasn't, and switching away is not a light lift, nor is mass educating the dev team.

Kafka et al definitely have their place, but I think most people would be much better off reaching for a simpler queue system (or for some things, just using Postgres) unless you really need the advanced features.

[EdwardDiego]

I'm wondering why there wasn't any push for the Kafka guy to share his knowledge within his team, or to other teams?

[freedomben]

Multiple factors (neither a good excuse, just reality):

* Lack of interest for other team members, which translated to doing what they thought was a sufficiently minimal amount of knowledge transfer

* An (unwise) attitude that "it's already set up and configured, and terraformed, so we can just acquire that knowledge if and when it's needed"

* Kafka guy left a lot faster than anybody really expected, not leaving much time and practically no documentation

* The rest of the team was already overwhelmed with other responsiblities and didn't have much bandwidth available

* Nobody wanted to be the person/people that ended up "owning" it, so there was a reverse incentive

[kragen]

Interesting, thanks!