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...
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.
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...
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 ↗