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Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete and Unsupported
(spectrum.ieee.org)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I had heard about these two patients years ago, and I still can't believe the doctor's death was this much of a set back. Did he write nothing down? Or did the company itself simply mismanage everything about this shit? This article makes it sound like the latter.
It's pretty common for people to have specialized knowledge that's only in their heads. In the software biz it's pretty much assumed that losing an engineer means losing some important knowledge, too.
if the company is functioning properly this is absolutely not the case
Even if absolutely everything is documented there is still the loss of familiarity and comfort working with a given system.
Having perfectly documented processes still might mean that a new engineer could take multiple hours following instructions to do what the person who originally built the system managed off the top of their head in fifteen minutes.