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I would ask a simple question.

When employees do their job in obscure or loosely explained way, or with scarce or ineffective documentation, out of worry their work would be underestmated if it becomes transparent how they do it,

does this phenomenon in business has a particular, specific, technical name?

Please notice this has nothing to do with performance or reaching objectives, just with communication.

(I added tag software development because it is my personal experience but I am curious about it in general corporate world)

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  • I can't think of a better definition than "Junior employee", needing for someone to guide them into how to do work more effectively. In a more serious note, as your question stands, I'm leaning towards considering it off-topic, unless you can restructure it in a way it's impacting the results of your (team) work.
    – Tiago Cardoso
    Commented Sep 13, 2023 at 15:27
  • @TiagoCardoso it's not clear about offtopic, I went to StackExchange because I think it's a bit better than Reddit, and in the home I searched "business" and "management" and this is the sole result. About work more effectively, I said clearly it has nothing to do with work quality. I don't know about impact on team, but it seems obvious more knowledge is shared the company/team is better (but not the employee, hence the question).
    – john_smith
    Commented Sep 13, 2023 at 17:25
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    Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer.
    – Community
    Commented Sep 14, 2023 at 5:11
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    I’m voting to close this question because it really belongs in n the English-language stack, since the querant is seeking a word rather than any business advice to address the issue.
    – keshlam
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 1:34
  • I think the question is fine here, but can you clarify what you mean by "underestmated"? "Underestimated" doesn't seem to fit, but "undervalued" might.
    – Adam Burke
    Commented Sep 18, 2023 at 5:29

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When employees do their job in obscure or loosely explained way, or with scarce or ineffective documentation, out of worry their work would be underestmated if it becomes transparent how they do it,

In some ways, this could be termed Empire Building, whereby the employee is trying to build up a stronghold of knowledge in order to become indispensable.

This is often seen with people who want to quit, but be invited back as a contractor (at higher rates), because they are the only people with the institutional knowledge. (but in one project I worked on, the company said "Nope" and hired outside contractors to replace the Empire Builder's home grown solution)

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The broad concept is "trustlessness", when employees believe either the employer or colleagues will retaliate against cooperation and helpfulness, such as with sackings and redundancies, pay cuts or withheld payrises, or "one-up-manship" and non-acknowledgement of assistance rendered.

Of course, in software this trustlessness isn't always the root of the problem. Instead, the root can be the failure of the employer to retain sufficiently skilled and experienced staff in the first place (who can articulate things to the necessary degree), or it can be expecting too much of the practical activity of a professional/craft job to be described in words to those who understand nothing.

Experienced developers don't generally struggle to understand what each other do - only non-technical management struggles to understand.

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I can't thing of a word for it, but it's common enough. Basically you want your work to look harder than it is in order to bill more, prevent people from copying your work, or making yourself more important.

I've seen it done multiple times by everyone from Mechanics to Electricians to Lawyers. Probably most professions do it to some degree.

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