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First, not every employee is a unique and rare snowflake - a one in a million hire. People _are_ mostly replaceable. This is reality, not a wet dream. Using an example to the contrary does not disprove the rule, just highlights an exception. If you read the post carefully, it describes very clearly what makes employee valuable _besides_ their domain knowledge. It's quite a lot. That's why it's so hard to lose people. As I wrote, we each bring our own capabilities, attitudes and skill sets. But that doesn't mean that it's alright to work under the assumption that _none_ of our contributions to the organization can be documented and shared. In fact, a lot of what we do in our day to day work is pretty mundane stuff. We tackle problems, we learn things, we talk to people and make decisions. So for the most part it's entirely reasonable to ask people to share their knowledge with others through documentation by default. Mind you, documentation can be as easy as discussing things in a mailing-list vs. personal emails (one is searchable after you quit, the other pretty much disappears). Additionally, the title of the post is clearly not to be taken literally. If you understood it to mean "find your best people, get them to document everything, and then fire them" then you misunderstood. That makes zero sense. It's those team players - the people who volunteer their knowledge - who are the most precious of all employees, and those are the ones you never actually want to let go. On the other hand, the ones who are sure that their own Peter Norvig level "genius" could never be put into documentation, are the problem. For what it's worth, this isn't an "empty suit's" dream. This is the way I've seen it done as a developer in a few software companies, and it's something I'm trying to promote ever since. And I stand by the title of the post, even if you find it controversial. Every organization has its local "guru" knowledge hoarder who is essentially a huge pain in the ass to manage because, intentionally or not, he's not playing well with others. He loves being a required participant in every single meeting. And heaven help you if you try to drive a change he disagrees with - no chance of that happening. These people should be prime candidates to get shit canned as early as possible. By adopting an organization-wide "document by default" attitude you gradually see less and less of this problem and reduce the chances of new hoarders sprouting up. |