Post #1984961

2026-05-04 21:10 UTC

@elizayer @hyc Passion for something (along with some hyperfocus) can help develop expertise and care in a thing. The nurturing used to come from a company that needed that sort of passion and would help it along because they saw the value in maintaining that sort of expertise. Then came the MBA set which were the beancounters without the compassion for humanity and started stripping out all that institutional knowledge infrastructure because it does cost a lot to build and maintain. Instead, outsourcing! Let some other company handle all that, yeah it'll be 60% less effective than keeping it in-house but it's cheaper this way and you don't need to concern yourself with employee maintenance anymore.

Replies (2)

@psa@masto.ai 2026-05-04 23:59

@nini @elizayer @hyc Oh my goodness, the contractors. It's not just the lack of institutional knowledge, it's also that many people don't seem to know how to write technical contracts. So, we end up with software projects which are unmaintainable in various ways. From not having any monitoring to requiring a large extra payments (and possibly contract adjustments) to make operational changes.

Open ##1984962
@Npars01@mstdn.social 2026-05-05 01:44

@nini @elizayer @hyc Rory Sutherland also points out the perverse bonus system of consultancies. The consultant get a bonus based on "cost savings" immediately. However, the destructive outcomes take months to manifest. Unhappy customers & payment delays. High absenteeism. Excessive voluntary attrition. Loss of process knowledge. Overwhelmed stakeholders. Enshittification. As #pluralistic describes it "Asbestos in the walls"; and years-long remediation required to fix technical debt.

Open ##2003821