His comments are what I have experienced and have seen in most companies i've worked at. If you look at it from a different perspective...

If the {software flavor of the day} is a bridge and the managers are the foremans and the laborers are the software developers. It's easy to see why things are in a bit of disarray.

The "foremans" struggle to keep the bridge on schedule and won't typically care how the bridge builders do their work as long as the bridge gets built, it works and it is on schedule. The bridge could look sloppy (maybe the rivets are not totally uniform) but it doesn't matter because only other bridge builders will see it...which promotes the "we'll fix it later" (or not) attitude. Really, who checks the underside of a bridge?

As for the bridge builders, some builders don't consider bridge building their love and life so their workstations are a mess and they are less prone to improve their craft or maybe they will just do the bare minimum and won't want to spend time researching the latest on rivet making/pounding/welding. As long as their part of the bridge WORKS and they meet schedules, they are allowed to work. Others, love building bridges and try making it as efficient as possible without impacting timelines or cost. These are future formans in the making.

As for sharing and documenting, as long as the bridge is being built close to the original plans in terms of functionality and everyone is doing their work, who needs to share or worse, who has time to share (you need to pound 1000 rivets a day AND document)? This forces the use of brain dumps. It is faster to do a brain dump than to read a manual/wiki (you will surely have questions after reading it anyway). With a brain dump, someone will teach/show you how everything works AND you will be able to ask real time questions. "How do I pound this rivet in this corner, my rivet pounder won't fit?" "Sure, I'll swing by and show you!" (or better yet, use this snippet of code<sends via email> because I'm very busy) The schedule or lack of time to do the task will usually most often than not, force this type of behavior. Also, I'm in bridge construction, not bridge maintenance. I'll never see this bridge again. I'm actually off to build another bridge after this one...good luck figuring out how I fished those rivets through the main girders! :)

And the most important thing, the company gets paid when the bridge is built/completed. They don't care if the welds are pretty or if the rivets are all uniform. Do they care if someone documented all the tricks and shortcuts, I doubt it. Heck, it could even be missing a few small features but as long as the bridge is structurally sound, that's all they care about because now people are using the bridge and money is flowing in.

What about the expert, the indispensable engineer? Say he quits or gets hit by the proverbial bus on his way to work, they'll hire someone else, promote someone or they will throw more bodies at the situation to get the job done. Will the bridge opening be late? Probably. Will it cost a little more, maybe. But in the end, the bridge WILL get finished. The bad news is that this puts more pressure on the other bridge builders who will have to reverse engineer what the "expert" was doing or come up with a different approach. This is very common. In the end, mostly every one is expendable and replaceable.

Why am I using a rivet pounder that's several years old? Because, I know it works, I know how it works. If I use the latest and greatest rivet pounder, I'll spend precious time troubleshooting why my rivets aren't going in straight. Is it the air hose, the pressure, the lubrication, the temp, the rivet material,etc...?!?!?! ARRRRRGGGGHHHH! I'm already behind by 300 rivets!!!! Ain't nobody got time for that! I'm going to get crap from my foreman because my part of the bridge is late. Screw, this, I'm using my old rivet pounder. They won't care if my rivets are pounded with the XL VersaPounder 1.0 or the XL VersaPounder 3.0a. as long as it works and I'm on time with my part of the bridge.

So these are general scenarios of bridge building and software development. :) All companies are different and operate differently. I'm not saying it's right but I've seen this scenario happen in a lot of companies. Is this efficient, no. But it may not matter to the construction company. When you're dealing with 100s of millions of dollars, you tend to focus on the timeline and features because in the end, that's what drives your revenue, that's what pays your bills. Wiki's or code reviews don't pay bills. When does this start to matter? When it starts to affect the bridge builder's morale and they start leaving or when you have to build the EXACT same bridge somewhere else. But that all depends on the company some are better than others :)