You are right. This is not a technical issue. In theory, I have better education in this area than his. That is the reason why the company picked me as backup.
However, there are a couple of things that prevents me from getting my hands on:
Lack of documentation. Nobody knows where the things are. Every time when I asked, he sent me a couple of files to look at. I believe he has hundreds of files like this made in all these years. I cannot see the whole picture from several pieces.
No work assignment. Once my boss, his boss, he and me had a meeting and asked him to assign me work. He appeared very cooperating and said, Bob had a very important project and needed his help; he was too busy so perhaps I could help Bob. And it should be a good entry project for me.
So I used my knowledge from school and designed several proposals for Bob, and asked him to test them out. Several days later, I asked Bob how things going, and he said: “Oh, I met A in hallway. He gave me a solution and told me this proved working well.” So all my time and effort were thrown in water.
