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

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”.