Last year, while speaking at PASS about imposter syndrome, another topic that kept coming up in conversations was knowledge hoarding.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand it. I’ve always been someone who loves to share what I know. If you’ve ever worked with me, you know that if you give me a whiteboard, I’ll train the paint off the walls.
However, over the past year, I began to notice patterns in myself and others that led me to understand why knowledge hoarding occurs and why it matters more than I initially thought.
So, let’s talk about it.
What Is Knowledge Hoarding?
Knowledge hoarding happens when someone keeps troubleshooting steps, skills, or “tribal knowledge” to themselves instead of sharing it with their team or organization.
Sometimes it’s intentional.
Sometimes it’s not.
Either way, the result is usually the same: silos, inefficiency, and frustration.
Why Knowledge Hoarding Happens
Here are some common reasons I’ve seen firsthand, including times I’ve caught myself doing it:
1. Overwork and burnout
When everything is urgent, nobody has time to teach. Everyone’s juggling 100 things, just trying to survive the next crisis. Over time, knowledge sharing takes a back seat.
2. Job security
This is probably the most common reason. If you’re the only person who understands a critical system, you feel indispensable.
But that kind of job security comes with stress, bottlenecks, and no room for growth for anyone.
3. Lack of engagement
It’s hard to stay motivated to teach when the person you’re teaching seems distracted or uninterested. Knowledge sharing only works when both sides care.
4. Imposter syndrome
The fear that if you share your process, someone might criticize it or realize you’re not as good as they think.
5. No incentives
When mentoring or documenting isn’t recognized or rewarded, it can feel like wasted effort or even punishment for being helpful.
6. Competitive culture
When a company creates competition between employees, knowledge becomes a weapon instead of a tool.
7. Poor documentation systems
If documentation is unorganized or confusing, people give up and rely on “that one person” who knows how to do it. Over time, that creates bottlenecks and single points of failure.
(Yes, I’m looking at you, OneNote chaos.)
8. Insufficient experience
People worry that others might misuse information.
For example, I’ve written scripts to mask sensitive data. I don’t share them broadly because if someone ran them in production instead of a test environment, it could be catastrophic.
So, I document them, but only for DBAs with the right access and training.
9. Lack of awareness
Sometimes people simply don’t realize how harmful it is to keep information to themselves.
The Pros and Cons
Knowledge hoarding isn’t always black and white.
Pros:
- Fewer mistakes from inexperienced users touching sensitive systems
- A sense of job security by being the “go-to” person
- Faster short-term results since you don’t stop to explain everything
- A competitive edge in tough environments
- Quality control because only vetted ideas move forward
Cons:
- Work moves slower and teamwork suffers
- If one person leaves, their knowledge leaves too
- Teams can become siloed and lose transparency
- People get stuck in roles because they are seen as the only ones who can do the job
- Repeating the same tasks leads to burnout
- Projects get held up waiting for one person to finish
- Less creativity and new ideas when only one perspective is considered
- Growth slows for both the company and the team
- Team members feel frustrated or undervalued
- People leave when they feel stuck or see no future
(Some folks truly enjoy repetitive work, and that’s okay, but many find it draining and demotivating.)
How to Prevent Knowledge Hoarding
Fixing knowledge hoarding takes time, but there are simple steps to take:
Create a sharing culture
Encourage people to teach and mentor. Even a quick thank-you or note of appreciation can motivate someone to share what they know.
Recognize effort and provide incentives
Sharing knowledge takes time. Reward people who document processes, run short trainings, or help others learn. Recognition can be a shout-out, thank-you note, small rewards.
I have worked for companies that did gift cards for anyone who would sign up to present.
Keep documentation clear
Instructions should be easy to find and follow. Clear documentation reduces reliance on the one person who knows everything.
Train in small chunks
Short, focused sessions work better than long trainings. Pair them with documentation so people can follow along and review later.
Build trust
People share knowledge when they feel safe. Handle questions or fact-checks before sessions so presenters feel confident.
Pick the right time
Avoid crises or major releases. Choose times when people can focus. In remote sessions, encourage cameras on to build connection.
Mix it up
Lunch-and-learns, micro-trainings, and peer demos make sharing natural and engaging, not a chore.
The Real-World Impact
I’ve lived this.
Years ago, I owned a product at a company. I handled migrations, updates, and communications. When ownership moved to a new team, I handed over all my notes, configs, and reminders.
Despite that, they pushed an update without applying the required fixes, and production broke.
I spent two exhausting weeks helping recover it. Later, I was accused of keeping product knowledge secret. But I had stand-ups, meetings, documentation, and transfer sessions to prove otherwise for weeks leading up to the event.
I wasn’t hoarding knowledge.
I was ignored.
That’s the tricky part. Sometimes, knowledge hoarding gets mistaken for disengagement, and it leaves everyone frustrated.
Final Thoughts
I used to think knowledge hoarding came from laziness or selfishness.
Now I see it differently.
It’s often rooted in fear, insecurity, or broken systems, not bad intentions.
That doesn’t make it okay, though. Knowledge hoarding still hurts teams, slows progress, and breeds frustration.
Here’s my personal rule:
I want to do my job so well that if I leave tomorrow, I don’t leave behind gaps.
Not because I gave away every detail, but because I taught what mattered, documented what counted, and built trust with the people around me. I want to be able to grow or move on without feeling guilty. Knowledge hoarding seems like it keeps people stuck in the same spot with no room to grow. Knowledge should be shared. Otherwise, it dies in silos, and when that happens, growth dies with it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
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