Maybe it's implicit, but you didn't mention why process-people hate illegible tribal knowledge. It's because they fear that the people may have better leverage in salary re-negotiation, and if they bail, the knowledge disappears. They want exchangeable engineers as the article writes. And in a way, becoming more standardized and less unique (at least in the minds of managers) is beneficial to oil the machine of the job market and economy. Ineffective companies can be left quickly, highly profitable companies can grow more easily.
More abstractly, explicit rules are a substitute for trust. You can run your family or friend group without coming up with a literal rulebook, but this already fails in a bigger village. So you first get mythical oral religious laws, then city-state laws etc. It's always a trust-substitute. But that's the only way to scale to civilization from distributed tribal lifestyle.
> Maybe it's implicit, but you didn't mention why process-people hate illegible tribal knowledge. It's because they fear that the people may have better leverage in salary re-negotiation, and if they bail, the knowledge disappears.
Being at a disadvantage in annual reviews is certainly a part of it I'm sure. Another non-trivial risk an organization must manage is retaining knowledge in a shareable form should team members transfer to other groups, take on a new role within the organization, or leave for reasons other than failed salary negotiations.
> More abstractly, explicit rules are a substitute for trust.
This is an interesting concept, thank you for sharing it (seriously). Stating it the way you have succinctly explains some of the asinine policies I have experienced in the past. Usually in large, dysfunctional, organizations I might add.
More abstractly, explicit rules are a substitute for trust. You can run your family or friend group without coming up with a literal rulebook, but this already fails in a bigger village. So you first get mythical oral religious laws, then city-state laws etc. It's always a trust-substitute. But that's the only way to scale to civilization from distributed tribal lifestyle.