Management drastically underappreciates the value of tribal knowledge. Even the best documentation doesn't cover every edge case.
Programming as Theory Building: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf
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.
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.
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.
- it exists (and will always exist)
- knowing it is *vital*
- maintaining ways of spreading it is *also* vitalIt’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”.
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.