Complex multiyear things are so unique that there is next to 0 chance to find another competent engineer as replacement. Some companies do that, and the only result is the extreme lack of quality and consequently reputation degradation. I witnessed this myself many, many times - great products turning into non-efficient and hard to use BS.
Complex things posses such a big number of moving components that simply iterating over them placing them into context is impossible for anyone except the one that was deep into it for years. Its not possible to "fill in" such person, particularly if that person was lacking in some domains like proper documentation (typical case).
As an example, I am leading a project that creates a government bank from 0. Just in last 2 years I wrote 1000+ pages of compressed documentation on it besides programming and management. Please replace me. My company and I are trying to do that for last 5 years.
Complex multiyear things are so unique that there is next to 0 chance to find another competent engineer as replacement. Some companies do that, and the only result is the extreme lack of quality and consequently reputation degradation. I witnessed this myself many, many times - great products turning into non-efficient and hard to use BS.
Complex things posses such a big number of moving components that simply iterating over them placing them into context is impossible for anyone except the one that was deep into it for years. Its not possible to "fill in" such person, particularly if that person was lacking in some domains like proper documentation (typical case).
As an example, I am leading a project that creates a government bank from 0. Just in last 2 years I wrote 1000+ pages of compressed documentation on it besides programming and management. Please replace me. My company and I are trying to do that for last 5 years.