Do you have any tips on how to maintain a developer's own knowledge base in Obsidian? I also use Obsidian but I currently use as more of a dumping ground.

It's actually quite simple even without using some of the advanced features: What I do is create a directory structure for each domain as I explore them. I.e.

Toplevel: - Work -- Job A: -- Daily notes -- Services -- Auth --- overview --- login flow -- Client -- Logger -- Job B: -- Daily notes -- Architecture -- node -- react -- etc

(edit: sorry about the formatting)

As the scope of your work expands, you add another sub-directory or file where necessary. Once it starts to grow in size, you can start making insightful connections via [[keyword]].

Furthermore, you can pretty much take this knowledge base with you, wherever you go, by uploading the vault file to your google drive and accessing it locally via SMB. Automatic save/backup.

I do the same except in org mode. I’ll export to markdown as needed but generally publishing documents is a secondary goal to empowering and decreasing the burden on myself.

Design docs for each and every feature has turned out not to scale for my current team. Larger, multi team features demand consolidated documentation, but for internal changes we rely on quick meetings as code reviews. Part of me misses the ceremony of the round table discussions, but the real difficulty is keeping track of why changes happen. Documenting processes and cross cutting concerns is a must have, but keeping track of all changes across quickly moving teams… it’s no surprise so many teams are just rife with tribal knowledge.

So you are now the gatekeeper?

If an individual employee is going to put all that work in without being asked to or being given scheduled time to work on it they should get something in return.

Unless they were asked for, no? You aren't a snowflake and you aren't own praise for something you weren't asked to do. Maybe you work is great and valued (gold star), but your point of being owed something is just a bald face lie to yourself.

In the above scenario, I do not understand what they are getting in return.

Are you saying this person should be hired/paid to store and retrieve the information being sought out?

Being as you put it the "gatekeeper" advertises their importance to everyone in the company who needs to know about the processes, making advancement easier and guarding against anyone thinking they are not necessary.

Maybe more like the font of knowledge?