Does the software industry learn?

“Institutional knowledge” - the information that a company collectively knows - is a familiar concept to anyone involved in hiring processes. When an individual leaves who has knowledge the organisation needs, companies will organise offboarding sessions to keep that knowledge within the institution. Maybe they’ll even try to hire someone with similar experience.

Lots of companies similarly try to optimise for “Institutional learning”, especially smaller firms. This makes a lot of sense - smaller companies don’t have the resources to buy in extra experience, so they focus on rapidly expanding the experience of their existing employees. It also fits really well with the agile philosophy of fast development cycles to maximise your knowledge about customers’ needs.