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Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

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Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#51

Post by j45 »

hoherd wrote: post #17

At a previous company where I had a lot of this "tacit knowledge", I had made a policy for myself. Whenever somebody asked me a question over IM or e-mail, I would look in the wiki. If the answer was not in the wiki, I would write a new wiki article or update an existing article with the answer, and I would respond with a link to the article, and a statement like "if this doesn't answer your question let me know what…

Another nice hack is to record a video as an answer, and put in the wiki doc, and then email a link to the wiki doc.

The explanation by IM/em can be troublesome because it could be out of date.

Helping your organization be creators is the way to go.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#52

Post by nullhole »

tikhonj wrote: post #11

Tacit knowledge is inevitable... but it's also different from what this article is about. Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge (and skill!) that cannot be fully explained or taught in words—think mechanical skills you can only pick up through physical practice or very context-specific expertise you only get through experience. In programming good taste is crucial and entirely tacit: we can try to distill taste in…

It's worth noting a tautology: tacit knowledge is undocmented because it is undocumentable.

The key insight (which I agree with!) is that some kinds of knowledge are undocumentable. The challenge - at least for those charged with ensuring processes are documented - is deciding what is and what isn't documentable.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#53

Post by botalert »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #6

Well, as in all of these absolutist black/white, binary statements, "it depends." In my experience, tribal knowledge, which also includes cultural inculcation, can be the difference between success and failure. Sometimes, on the success side, and, sometimes, on the failure side. The main thing about "tribal knowledge," is that it relies on long-term association/employment, and that is not something we see much of, th…

Come now Chris, you know articles like these are cat nip for the HN circlejerk. Put up a straw man and then beat it down over and over again.

PS. I loved the page you put up of your dad a few days ago and mentioned in the thread about diplomacy. Very interesting person.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#54

Post by jessriedel »

tikhonj wrote: post #11

Tacit knowledge is inevitable... but it's also different from what this article is about. Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge (and skill!) that cannot be fully explained or taught in words—think mechanical skills you can only pick up through physical practice or very context-specific expertise you only get through experience. In programming good taste is crucial and entirely tacit: we can try to distill taste in…

Thanks, this is the exactly correct critique of the article.

I'll just add that the author did not seriously grapple with the fact that leaving at least some explicit knowledge undocumented is inevitable. There is no sharp divide between "explicit knowledge every programmer should know" and "explicit knowledge that only makes sense in our organization". Documenting is costly to produce, and documentation is costly to maintain even after it is produced. (If nothing else, more documentation makes it harder to search.) This holds even if it's simultaneously true that large organizations usually document insufficiently because of laziness and bad incentives.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#55

Post by chongli »

tikhonj wrote: post #11

Tacit knowledge is inevitable... but it's also different from what this article is about. Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge (and skill!) that cannot be fully explained or taught in words—think mechanical skills you can only pick up through physical practice or very context-specific expertise you only get through experience. In programming good taste is crucial and entirely tacit: we can try to distill taste in…

I think almost all knowledge is tacit knowledge. Even stuff that would seem obviously explicit like mathematics and language.

In my experience tutoring high school students, I’ve encountered plenty of students who struggle with spelling, grammar, or mathematical mistakes and no matter how many times I correct them it doesn’t stick. Then I see other students who pick these things up so quickly without correction.

Mathematics, especially, seems to have a strong tacit component. If all you do is read the textbook you’re going to bomb the exam. You need to practice a lot to develop your mathematical intuition.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#56

Post by austin-cheney »

The US Army has formal training about this and provides an Advanced Skill Identifier (ASI) to those training to practice it. See:

* Techniques for Effective Knowledge Management, ATP 6-01.1, https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/pdf/web/atp6_01...

The Army technique follows the DIKW model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_pyramid

When I did that job as NCOIC for a major sustainment command in Afghanistan I learned how to mix documentation, automation, and empathy to create a shared vision amongst the 24 shops that comprised the unit. I never would have matured into this writing corporate software.

Since being laid off this year I am choosing to regress and aggressively embrace tacit knowledge. In the past I used to publish things I had learned to GitHub and many people found those writing extremely beneficial. As a JavaScript developer, however, I have finally been beaten into submission by the neglectful immaturity of my profession and so many of my peers.

I have grown tired of debasing myself when so many people are hostile to any concepts of helpful guidance. The name of the game is attain employment by writing the same framework glue over and over thereby pandering to the desires of the least competent and least employable of the workforce. Any deviation is met with hostility first and possibly curiosity later. As a result I abandoned that line of work until I found a career change and now keep my learning about automation, performance, and architecture to myself.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#57

Post by PakG1 »

Per other comments here, this is not what tacit knowledge is. There is an entire body of research devoted to understanding tacit knowledge. Anyone interested in tacit knowledge can read the works of those who have spent years researching the topic. Here are some sample papers. Nonaka is perhaps the most well-known one in this space.

Hadjimichael, D., and Tsoukas, H. 2019. “Toward a Better Understanding of Tacit Knowledge in Organizations: Taking Stock and Moving Forward,” Academy of Management Annals (13:2), pp. 672–703. (https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2017.0084).

Huang, X., Hsieh, J. P.-A., and He, W. 2014. “Expertise Dissimilarity and Creativity: The Contingent Roles of Tacit and Explicit Knowledge Sharing,” Journal of Applied Psychology (99:5), pp. 816–830.

Nonaka, I., and Von Krogh, G. 2009. “Perspective—Tacit Knowledge and Knowledge Conversion: Controversy and Advancement in Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory,” Organization Science (20:3), pp. 635–652. (https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1080.0412).

Nonaka, I. 1994. “A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation,” Organization Science (5:1), pp. 14–37.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#58

Post by FeepingCreature »

DaveSchmindel wrote: post #22
MarkusQ wrote: post #3

This looks like a really good use case for LLMs. When you're small and starting out in person, record everything the dev team does -- meetings, whiteboads, pairing sessions, etc. (yeah, creepy, but I'm in brainstorming mode) and then as you start to scale beyond the ability to "ask someone who knows" trail up an LLM to serve as the 24x7 lore master.

Ah, nice, like feeding a custom GPT everything that goes on at the company. That seems dangerous to me, and not in the typical LLM weariness way. Meetings can be messy, full of ambiguity, and "unsolved" at then end. If you feed a number of these experiences into an LLM, would its knowledge base be _that great_ at helping teach somebody about the company holding said meetings? I'd argue that in order for your LLM sugg…

It would be interesting to see if you could train a LLM, given " The foo is definitely xyfied" to exclusively answer "Well, at least two months ago, A thought that the foo was xyfied" rather than opine about foo directly.

Re: Tacit Knowledge Is Dangerous

#59

Post by vasco »

Public everything inside the company. No private rooms. Redirect questions in dms to rooms. Public docs for everything. Everyone with full access to Google drive.

Now your "question to the other side of the world" becomes a slack search, or a docs search, and is even better than in person.

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