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Comment by HNisCIS | Hacker News Reader

So the goal is to get rid of the people who have all the internal knowledge?

Speaking as a greybeard, it's not really that valuable. Younger people are just as smart, if not smarter, and they can figure it out if I get hit by a bus. There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.

Microsoft uses React Native in their Start menu because the kids don't know Windows programming anymore.

Makes no sense if you look at the start menu as an interface to the operating system.

Makes perfect sense if you look at it as one more place to show ads

Windows native app development is a mess https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475938

I think it was perhaps useful, at least in knowing which things are Chesterton's Fence. I doubt that AI can figure that out, since it's not always possible for humans to figure that out either.

But with AI, simple codebase understanding or even just paving over everything, including the fence, is potentially easy, and getting easier each month.

Certainly, a certain amount of senior experience is needed. The AI lacks taste and discretion. But the greybeard sensibilities the come with increasing seniority will probably hold back the new pace of things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

>There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.

Learn, yes. Will they get the time and training for that, given that they are taking on 30+ year legacy code? I'm less confident.

Ah, but can they tell the same tales as you can? Maybe in time when their beard starts getting grey in it, but that time is not now.

There is a difference between figuring out and already knowing. Especially if time is a limiting factor

Get rid of their highest-paid employees, replace them with off-shoring and AI.

Eventually the fact that the US military and government is getting tech support from overseas will catch up. Microsoft is a walking national security disaster.

But all they care about is "line go up next quarter". Their monopoly has made them lazy.

They’re probably not the only people who keep the lights on. And if a few people are gate keeping information, you already have a problem that needs fixing.

How do you go about fixing the problem if you end up buying out all the people with the domain knowledge you were hoping to preserve? That's like burning all the treasure maps before you set sail.

Not saying a move like this won’t have any impact, but over emphasizing on domain knowledge is detrimental to engineering orgs. Some things will break, some things will be rediscovered by sinking more time, some things will be lost forever. But you also gain flexibility, fresh direction and the ability to move forward. When you work at a company for 20 years, you may be valuable when it comes to things that are done “the company way” but are also partially blind to how the industry has moved forward in those 20 years.

Microsoft is a services company with engineering roots. That can be a dangerous combination in the long run if they forget where their bread is buttered. I would hope the Windows 11 backlash serves as a warning that they can’t just ignore their customers in pursuit of a vision.

Yeah domain knowledge is expensive. Can you imagine how much it would cost to run a business where everyone knows the ins and outs of all of the customer use cases?

There might be these wizards, but probably most of them are dudes who were attached to something successful 15 years ago and have been riding out their time at an inflated level.

it's more like just giving the employees that are nearing retirement an option to retire early if they want to.

all the people that knew how to keep Github running and make a clean version of Windows are already gone, I suppose

Absolutely true for GitHub; there was an exodus a few years after the acquisition presumably once some key vesting dates hit…

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