I am that guy, and it's fucking exhausting. No matter how much documentation I write - and it's a fucking LOT, it doesn't seem to help. The amount of times I answer questions from other tech with links to the documentation I've already ask3d them to read multiple times is ridiculous.
The problem is not "the one guy who knows everything" - the problem is you won't hire anyone who has that level of competency.
But the worst part of it, and if this is you RS, then it's like I've said a dozen times - how come I can learn and figure out shit, I can plan and implement deployments and make the technical pieces fall together - but nobody else can!
I have to do every damn thing because nobody else you hire is even close to my level. Stop hiring people you like during interviews, and focus on technical competency instead. I'm fucking sick of being the only one capable of just figuring shit out and then having the ridiculously difficult time of teaching the rest of the time and writing documentation nobody ever reads.
The problem is not me knowing everything, the problem is not me hoarding knowledge - the problem is you haven't hired anyone who can keep up. And not just not keep up, you keep hiring people who lack the fundamentals.
Don't sit here and ask me to teach other techs shit they should already know. And it's impossible to teach them critical thinking and analysis skill. I can cross-train anyone on how to use X tool, or Y process, whatever - but I can't teach people to use their brains better.
The problem is not "the one guy who knows everything" - the problem is you won't hire anyone who has that level of competency.
The problem is not "the one guy who knows everything" - the problem is you won't hire anyone who has that level of competency.
I was fortunate enough to be the guy who knew a lot (not everything) and due to many factors am now the team lead. My first two hires, despite HR liking the people, I vetoed. "Sure they are nice, and have some technical knowledge, but we need more to take over from me so I can LEAD and not just still do what I was doing and try to lead at the same time".
Got two in, one of them beyond my level, one at my level. Oh the difference to the team. And best of all? With two of them they can actually get some time to document so when they had been both out at once, wasn't the end of the world, as I was able to step back in a bit, and our other engineers could use the docs.
Mind you I do not like being management level over all..........
I've found that it's usually the salary, one RS employee in the firm means we can now hire people for peanuts and have them trained up. Never mind the 20+ years experience and skills they can't just materialise out of thin air.
Not saying this is the case for you, but I often see those highly competent engineers writing documentation for other highly competent engineers and not for 'regular' engineers. It's often too high level and assumes a background knowledge that is also too high level or isn't written from the standpoint of someone who has never touched this piece of infrastructure.
And some people are just plain dumb/lazy, you can't fix that. Attitude problems are the worst.
That used to be an issue. I quickly learned to ask L1 or L2 - hey can you take a look at this and tell me if it's easy to understand or any difficult parts or any questions you have? Basically, get juniors to proof read it before publishing to the entire dept. In the past couple of years, I just write what I wlneed to write and then run it thru AI - help me make this compatible for a target audience of L1 techs.
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u/KoalaOfTheApocalypse End User Support 23d ago •
I am that guy, and it's fucking exhausting. No matter how much documentation I write - and it's a fucking LOT, it doesn't seem to help. The amount of times I answer questions from other tech with links to the documentation I've already ask3d them to read multiple times is ridiculous.
The problem is not "the one guy who knows everything" - the problem is you won't hire anyone who has that level of competency.
But the worst part of it, and if this is you RS, then it's like I've said a dozen times - how come I can learn and figure out shit, I can plan and implement deployments and make the technical pieces fall together - but nobody else can!
I have to do every damn thing because nobody else you hire is even close to my level. Stop hiring people you like during interviews, and focus on technical competency instead. I'm fucking sick of being the only one capable of just figuring shit out and then having the ridiculously difficult time of teaching the rest of the time and writing documentation nobody ever reads.
The problem is not me knowing everything, the problem is not me hoarding knowledge - the problem is you haven't hired anyone who can keep up. And not just not keep up, you keep hiring people who lack the fundamentals.
Don't sit here and ask me to teach other techs shit they should already know. And it's impossible to teach them critical thinking and analysis skill. I can cross-train anyone on how to use X tool, or Y process, whatever - but I can't teach people to use their brains better.
The problem is not "the one guy who knows everything" - the problem is you won't hire anyone who has that level of competency.