Asklemmy

I absolutely get what you're saying, and it definitely depends on a lot of factors, mainly how easily replaceable you are.

I agree with the fact that it takes a combination of talent, experience/expertise in the field, and the company itself (mainly it's culture) that can dictate a lot of that. However, things like previous experience, and talent are not exactly things you can pass on to a new technician via any form of documentation without chronicling your life story with every instance of needing to do anything remotely technical which may lean into the problem-solving skills and thought process you uniquely have, and even then, on-boarding that experience would be a monumental challenge. Simply put, that's not practical. Even that, doesn't account for any ability to pass on talent, which isn't quantifiable in any meaningful way.

The main argument I have is that the knowledge of the organization's systems, how they interconnect, why those interconnections matter, how they work, etc. should not be up for question or debate; and it should only be a matter of finding someone with relevant past experience in similar systems, with sufficient talent, who meshes adequately with the company culture, to be found, in order to replace someone.

Unfortunately, finding someone with sufficient talent is often the most difficult part, and since it's difficult to assess talent in an interview or even a set of interviews, it's usually impossible to know if someone is going to "fit the bill" so-to-speak, until they've been thrown into the fire.... This is the reason for the probationary period of most workers, both for the benefit of the worker, if they're not meshing with the company, and for the company, if the worker isn't capable of doing the job. Unfortunately, often, especially with I.T. work, it's difficult to know whether someone is going to work out long-term after a few months, especially when the amount of knowledge someone needs to have to actually do most tech jobs is so monumental that it's unlikely that the new hire is going to have any significant depth of knowledge in the technical systems within a few months of being hired.

All of this sets aside the factor that every individual is unique and makes unique choices and contributions to the whole, so even "replacing" a very replaceable individual position, isn't a 1:1 comparison, the new worker may be worse, or indeed, even better, than the previous one, but rarely, if ever, would perform EXACTLY the same in every circumstance.

My core argument is that the information about the system (which needs to be supplemented by talent and experience), should never be lost if an employee decides to walk (either by finding a new job, walking in front of a bus, or off a short pier). If that information is lost, it's a significant managerial oversight which allowed that to happen.