Wait, Let's Keep the Smart One
I love layoffs as much as the next guy, but maybe you should never lay off 100 percent of any given team if you're ever expecting to do anything with the product for which they were responsible. Sure, all of those other competent people at your company can take over their duties (while they're not looking for a job elsewhere). Oh wait. You cut a bunch of corners and/or planned to do that "later" so there's a bunch of stuff that's not documented? It's just been handed down in tribal stories while the programmers sat around the warming glow of the monitor and smoked peace pipes? Oh yeah. You're boned.
That's one of those little details I've seen overlooked many times. The cost savings of cutting 100 percent of the team (and possibly offshoring their jobs) is less than cutting everyone except one of the guys that knows how shit works. I still prefer valuing working software over documentation, so I don't think the answer is to exhaustively document stuff. It's just to be aware of what is and isn't documented and plan accordingly. Just a little something I was thinking about today for no reason in particular…
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