Management drastically underappreciates the value of tribal knowledge. Even the best documentation doesn't cover every edge case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_knowledge

▲ b1temy 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

What are your thoughts on the usefulness of tribal knowledge when older (age-wise) employees change jobs? [0]

Then, the tribal knowledge they had at their previous place of employment won't be as useful somewhere else. Though I suppose you can make an argument that they might have similar workflows, or tools, or they might just have general experience that would be useful.

But I suppose your comment was more on the under-appreciation by management of existing tribal knowledge in a team.

[0] Perhaps out of necessity, e.g: company went under, or maybe they want a change of pace.

	▲	lostlogin 11 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> the tribal knowledge they had at their previous place of employment won't be as useful somewhere else. It cuts both ways. It pays to listen when someone goes 'We tried that at my last workplace, here is what happened..' I've been lucky enough to have a few examples of that in my career.
	▲	danenania 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There are different kinds of tribal knowledge. Some is company-specific, some is role-specific or domain-specific.

▲ deathanatos 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If you've not read it yet:

Programming as Theory Building: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf

▲ t-writescode 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While I'm not sure that we should encourage the continuation and growth of tribal knowledge, it is incredibly unwise to not recognize that:

  - it exists (and will always exist)
  - knowing it is *vital*
  - maintaining ways of spreading it is *also* vital

	▲	notyourwork 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn’t read the comment you replied to in that way. I read it as, edge cases can be gnarly and the most thorough of documentation and process will never capture them all. It’s just the truth, tribal knowledge comes from experience in the trenches and what a new hire could take weeks to discern from perfect documentation and old timer may know off the cuff. That’s the reality of enterprise software. Especially in big tech where scale is massive and theoretical solutions aren’t always the best choice for “reasons”.

▲ pcurve 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not just the management.

Younger workers as well.

I speak from my own experience from both sides of the table, now of course at the receiving end of the under appreciation.

▲ chii 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Management drastically underappreciates the value of tribal knowledge.

they may, but i think it's that they prefer if there were no tribal knowledge - because it means having irreplaceable people, which makes for weak business continuation should accidents/issues arise with those people.

	▲	general1465 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You are being downvoted, but I absolutely agree. Tribal knowledge (institutional knowledge) is a bug not a feature. It is lack of standardized processes and it is ultimately a failure of management to extract this knowledge from employees, any means necessary.