As a trainer and blogger I have a chance to talk to many engineers from various (telco) companies. And I can hear a lot of similar complains. “We’re just reinventing a wheel, over and over again.”, “I feel like an investigator – to find the right information/documentation is so painful.”, “R&D doesn’t want to share anything.”, “They are not answering to my questions, they’re just sending a lot of crap to keep me busy.”, etc. The common denominator is that companies don’t encourage engineers to work aloud and share their experience and knowledge. Why? So much effort and talent is wasted.. And by encouraging I mean also that they don’t provide the right tools (no, it’s not sharepoint) and managers don’t lead by their examples.
This can’t be fixed by any process or action points. It is about company/team culture. If managers treat engineers as “resources”, act as if they are more important, or if they say “we’re not at work to make friends” (and some are even so dump to share it on social networks), it is hard to imagine that others would willingly share their know-how. Yes, there can be some lessons-learn filled after project, some reports created – but honestly, what engineers read these documents??
Real Time Communication 