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Ask HN: What is the bus factor at your company?
- nicky0 10y agoThe what now?
- wargame 10y agoThe amount of people a bus would have to take out before a project/company etc can no longer get work done.
- knz 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor "The bus factor is a measurement of the risk resulting from information and capabilities not being shared among team members. It is also known as the lottery factor, truck factor, bus/truck number or lorry factor".
- CodeWriter23 10y agoRight? We called it the Mack Truck Factor back in the day.
- steverb 10y agoWe call it the lottery factor to try and put a more positive spin on it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mey 10y agoDisturbingly high for the size of the company. I can point to several locations where one person is pivotal to core business functions and causes issues when they go on vacation.
- luiscarloscb 10y agoWouldn't that be a disturbingly low bus factor?
- mey 10y agoApparently yes, wasn't sure the scale :)
- GFischer 10y agoSame here, plenty of areas with a bus factor of one. Even worse, one of the critical persons is over 70 - incredibly sharp, healthy and keeps up to date, I hope to reach her age with those skills, but her age makes a health problem more likely. That said, her irreplaceability is more due to stupid security setup (she's the only one that has all the necessary privileges), so I guess she could be replaced eventually after some hiccups (and at a big hit to productivity).
- jfrisby 10y agoI've worked at maybe two companies with a bus factor > 1. Maybe.
- chris_7 10y ago1
- jpindar 10y agoOne.
- bbcbasic 10y agoI have a feeling people will be biased into thinking their bus factor is lower than it really is. Day to day experience may make it seem like if John or Jane got hit by a bus, nothing can happen. In reality businesses adapt and there are probably other people that can step in. Once they must, they will.
- flukus 10y agoI'm sure the business could adapt to our low bus factor, but it would take months at least of nothing really happening, there is really only one person that knows some of the critical codebases and they're so spaghettified that I'm not sure if anyone else could learn it.
- lm2s 10y ago2
- yolesaber 10y agoZero. Nothing works anyway.
- eastindex 10y ago1, its always Jane or James.
- Spoom 10y agoProbably 2 or higher at this point. We've made some real strides recently in getting everything documented somewhere.
- TurboHaskal 10y ago3 and increasing as new technical team lead keeps optimising for short term results and his own career development. I am not voicing much criticism as part of me wants him to fail even if it ends up hurting the product but I suspect he will leave us before the shit hits the fan.