> But documentation is not the same as field experience. Automation is not the same as judgment. Without people who have actually worked with the system, you end up with a loss of tacit knowledge—and eventually, declining productivity.

This tracks the experience throughout my carreer, in all sorts of companies. From established body-shop consulting, to minor early-stage startup, to FAANG, and everything in between.

Essentially everywhere I worked, you would benefit to switch jobs. Companies would at times do quite an effort to hire you, but wouldn't try anything to keep you around.

This always sounded bonkers to me, but as I directly benefited with a rapidly increasing salary when I job-hopped, my response was a vague shrug. "Those who care don't know and those who know don't care".

The thing is, in every place, you typically is at your least useful when you just joined. It takes months, sometimes years, to learn the intricacies of the business, the knowledge that informs your skills so you can make better decisions, better designs, better implementation, better initiatives.

This is, of course, just one facet of a larger trend of how things are typically mismanaged. The article brushes on it when it talks about how governments in the US and Europe had to scramble to get 50-year old manufacturing going anywhere.

This is why I laugh whenever I hear someone talking about "governments should be administered like a business". Bitch, businesses are typically mismanaged due to terrible incentive loops, institutional blindness and corporate rot. That anything seemingly works is more a result of inertia and conformity than a sign that things are well managed.