I worked for a Japanese corporation, and a big part of their HR policy, was to move staff around the company. It was usually in 1- or 2-year stints (people would spend their entire careers at the company, so they could do this). Eventually, they would end up doing longer stints, where they would specialize.
They would couple this with things like standardized coding and documentation styles, common tools, etc. Training on these standards was a regular thing for all staff.
The idea was that they could rapidly move experienced staff around. It also helped staff to understand how their work was applied in an integrated system (having “blinders” on, is a fairly typical issue, with dedicated employees).
It generally worked, but relied on their particular culture, and introduced a fairly significant amount of overhead and rigidity to the system. It would also mean that it takes a long time to cultivate experts.
Personally, I’ve always enjoyed learning new stuff (still do). I actually enjoy taking on projects that I don’t know how to do. I wrote about it here: <a href="https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/" rel="nofollow">https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
I've been at U.S. companies that paid lip service to this flexible sort of coverage, but once you are actually useful in the dept you're in, your boss never wants to let you go because upper management didn't build in the redundancy to the headcount to ensure you'd be effectively replaced...
This is also part of the system for doctors in the US, it's called residency. During residency rotations the residents (who have already graduated medical school) go through structured clinical training with patients within each medical specialty, supervised by an attending physician.
It also relies on lifelong tenure, which would be a huge cultural shift for both employers and employees. Employees are often used to quitting rather than having to fix business issues (easier to quit than make the business fix X), and businesses are largely used to mistreating their employees because they can be replaced.
We’re culturally very far from even being able to attempt that.
In the 1990's UPS spent a lot of effort grooming promising junior employees to move up the ranks and become managers. They would then move the managers around to different locations, thinking that good manager can manage any dept. Many of these guys had moved up from being delivery drivers. It became interesting when they would get assigned to manage the IT division, which was developing and supporting internal and external software products, as well as various help desks.
If you’re part of what is known as the general career track (総合職) and are actually being groomed for (middle) management, it’s common policy to move people every 3 years, in theory it prevents building of fiefdoms while also giving you a chance to improve your network, know the ins and outs of your company/government agency and give you the opportunity to accumulate small wins along the way.
The silly policy also extends towards things like supermarket managers, midsized companies with a country wide branch network public school teachers and other nonmilitary civil service positions.
If you’re a primary school teacher, you likely won’t see your students graduate.
I also saw entities (mainly gov agencies) where it has a disastrous result. Because management know they will be out in 3 years, they spend as much budget as they can to initiate as big projects as they can and have them on their resume, plan beyond their 3-y stay here, and leave with a big bonus. This way they never get asked why it is not complete ("because it's plan for a couple more years"), the project fails eventually (people actually working on the stuff end up leaving too at some point), and the cycle repeats with the next guy.
My mom worked at Cisco in a non-technical role for 30 years, and they did this. She was an IC and then manager for 3-5 years at a time on a bunch of different teams.
Military members also move on around the organization spending times in different parts for the same reasons. This is a strategy you apply when you want organizational resilience, but it comes at the cost of efficiency. You can't have both at the same time.
ChrisMarshallNY · · focus · HN ↗
They would couple this with things like standardized coding and documentation styles, common tools, etc. Training on these standards was a regular thing for all staff.
The idea was that they could rapidly move experienced staff around. It also helped staff to understand how their work was applied in an integrated system (having “blinders” on, is a fairly typical issue, with dedicated employees).
It generally worked, but relied on their particular culture, and introduced a fairly significant amount of overhead and rigidity to the system. It would also mean that it takes a long time to cultivate experts.
Personally, I’ve always enjoyed learning new stuff (still do). I actually enjoy taking on projects that I don’t know how to do. I wrote about it here: <a href="https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships-are-built-for/" rel="nofollow">https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...
tomaskafka · · focus · HN ↗
groestl · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
elmo-shrugged · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
inemesitaffia · · focus · HN ↗
tristor · · focus · HN ↗
tacticalturtle · · focus · HN ↗
No, residency is within a specific specialty only.
It’s more like the clinical rotations that occur in year 3 and 4 of medical school in the U.S.
everforward · · focus · HN ↗
We’re culturally very far from even being able to attempt that.
jimmydddd · · focus · HN ↗
seizethecheese · · focus · HN ↗
SenHeng · · focus · HN ↗
The silly policy also extends towards things like supermarket managers, midsized companies with a country wide branch network public school teachers and other nonmilitary civil service positions.
If you’re a primary school teacher, you likely won’t see your students graduate.
bionsystem · · focus · HN ↗
richardubright · · focus · HN ↗
Eddy_Viscosity2 · · focus · HN ↗