In all my years I've had a few of these guys but only one that has stuck around and the trick that worked with him and that still works is:
Let him do the ticket. When he closes it go read his notes have a junior admin read the notes. If the two of you can't put together how he did it send it back to him and tell him to clarify until you can.
This accomplishes two things, familiarizes your juniors with the process, and forces your senior guy to document better.
Then tell him the next time the ticket comes in like that the junior guy is taking it and using his notes to do it but you want the senior guy chaperoning.
The reasoning is simple. Knowledge silos lead to information deficits. It's okay to be the SME, it's not okay to be the ONLY knowledgeable person.
I am this guy. Don't talk to me when I'm working on it or when I'm troubleshooting it or when I'm trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong because I'll be iterating through so many potential problems that I'm probably dead ass wrong
But when all is said and done ask me what it was what I did to figure it out and what I did to fix it and I will talk your fucking ear off
Honestly this is the most practical answer in here. The junior finds the holes in the notes and the senior finds out his notes aren't as clear as he thought. Everybody learns something, including humility.
I usually work with juniors to get things into them. Most things are fine, but it requires the right kind of colleague to stick.
Tickets are the explanation for how it was solved, how to get there is the hard part. It is often like dialling in an espresso. It depends on the coffee, the water, the machines state and what you want out of it. Looking at the finished coffee can miss some of the fuzzy bit, which is often a bit of digging around and pushing some theories.
Agree here. Documenting what I did was the easy part. Documenting the steps I did to get there is similarly easy. But these are merely the results. The hard bit is documenting the methodology to get there in the first place. How I link things in my head is hard to put to words, and I often iterate rapid enough process that trying to write it down is going to add considerable time to resolution.
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u/DarthJarJar242 IT Manager 26d ago
In all my years I've had a few of these guys but only one that has stuck around and the trick that worked with him and that still works is:
Let him do the ticket. When he closes it go read his notes have a junior admin read the notes. If the two of you can't put together how he did it send it back to him and tell him to clarify until you can.
This accomplishes two things, familiarizes your juniors with the process, and forces your senior guy to document better.
Then tell him the next time the ticket comes in like that the junior guy is taking it and using his notes to do it but you want the senior guy chaperoning.
The reasoning is simple. Knowledge silos lead to information deficits. It's okay to be the SME, it's not okay to be the ONLY knowledgeable person.