If you've not read it yet:

Programming as Theory Building: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf

What are your thoughts on the usefulness of tribal knowledge when older (age-wise) employees change jobs? [0]

Then, the tribal knowledge they had at their previous place of employment won't be as useful somewhere else. Though I suppose you can make an argument that they might have similar workflows, or tools, or they might just have general experience that would be useful.

But I suppose your comment was more on the under-appreciation by management of existing tribal knowledge in a team.

[0] Perhaps out of necessity, e.g: company went under, or maybe they want a change of pace.

While I'm not sure that we should encourage the continuation and growth of tribal knowledge, it is incredibly unwise to not recognize that:

  - it exists (and will always exist)
  - knowing it is *vital*
  - maintaining ways of spreading it is *also* vital

It's not just the management.

Younger workers as well.

I speak from my own experience from both sides of the table, now of course at the receiving end of the under appreciation.

> Management drastically underappreciates the value of tribal knowledge.

they may, but i think it's that they prefer if there were no tribal knowledge - because it means having irreplaceable people, which makes for weak business continuation should accidents/issues arise with those people.