Comment by GFischer
16 years ago
They don't want anyone that has a clue and might therefore threaten them! (sadly seen this in my work)
Edit: many of the other cynical explanations further down in the thread are quite valid too (scapegoat theory et al)
I've worked at so many of the largest companies as an employee, contractor and even overpaid consultant and this is completely true. These companies are completely mired in their own structure that there is nothing they can do to get out.
Everyone is protecting their turf and their headcount that you almost have to have "Bob and Bob" come into, even though they don't know anything themselves.
When I was working for a professional organization as a consultant, sometimes I would go into gigs where I literally knew nothing about the product that I was supposedly an expert on. I remember specifically one case where I spent a frantic weekend learning about a tech that I was supposed to help this company plan a rollout for because I was the expert. The worst part was these employees had been preparing for this rollout for weeks, so they already had a good grasp of the core and I was still trying to learn all of the acronyms.
Human group social behavior is a liability in our modern society. It works pretty well when you're a tribe of 20 people hunting and gathering, but it doesn't scale.