Tell HN about: Institutional memory and reverse smuggling | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN about: Institutional memory and reverse smuggling

wrttn.in

41 pointsoldengineer9 comments

Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I've been meaning to write something about this. Some recent discussions on HN about institutional memory convinced me to throw it online.

Thank you for sharing - unfortunate that it doesn't get picked up & voted on more - really enjoyed reading :)

As others said, thank you for sharing. This seems especially valuable for the rare perspective: the story itself is presumably commonplace, but you have to have decades of experience to be able to experience it.

One of the vernor vinge books had software archeology as a discipline, for similar reasons.

Programmer/archaeologist.

This article reminds me of the one where MacDonald's returning CEO finds out that they have lost the recipe of the special sauce. It was kept so secret that they finally lost it, and but for the CEO knowing the guy who formulated it, brought him out of retirement to make one more batch, we'd never have it on our Macs today.

Software projects are like this too. After a few years, a lot of memory is lost if people leave.

I enjoyed the reference to "alien technology". Indeed it is.

Great read. I've seen it happen-my boss was asked to go back and help consult to a bank he used to work for (this was in 2008, the bank was failing and being bought) about some database archive features he implemented, IIRC. Also, in my current job, I'm currently at a customer site helping them figure out how the machine we sold them a year ago works. Engineering documentation is just as important as software documentation.

The section on reverse corporate espionage reminded me of the old Robert Heinlein/Lazarus Long quote: "Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." And that humans get even stupider in groups, whether governments or corporations.

The page is not able to scroll on the android browser.

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