To semi-quote a higher up at $dayJob, at BigTech, talking to his directors: "If your engineers aren't fungible you're bad at your jobs".

Everyone should just be a small cog in a big machine.

But that's just good management. You can't have your organization struggle because someone gets hit by a bus or quits suddenly.

	▲	ChrisMarshallNY 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> good management I'm not sure I'd apply "good" as a modifier. Being generous, maybe "mediocre." Good managers know how to find, cultivate, and maximize exceptional people, and that's a difficult job. I have a feeling that LLMs are going to drastically improve the baseline quality of software. The top end will always require exceptional human involvement, but it will look different.
	▲	duttish 28 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Hm. To me there's a difference between handling the bus factor: make sure several people on the team knows about things, and fungible engineers: can move engineers between products.

ffsm8 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

yeah, most large employers think like that.

it remains to be seen if thats going to be the way in ~10 years after the dust has settled.

i suspect those middle managers will try to fight tooth and nail to hold onto that status quo, because it leaves them with all the power.