Having a dept of 1 engineer is not great [1]. You'd want ideally 3 or 4. Whick is kinda no-man's-land between 50k and 500k. Say 125k,which would get you good, b

Having a dept of 1 engineer is not great [1]. You'd want ideally 3 or 4. Whick is kinda no-man's-land between 50k and 500k. Say 125k,which would get you good, but not stellar. (and would be an improvement over 10 somewhat incompetent.) [1] having just 1 creates lots of bigger issues ; Availability (what happens when he's sick or on vacation). Technical documentation (there is none, its all in his head). Role transfer (when he leaves there is short intense handover, then nothing). Opinioned design - he does it his way, no discussion necessary - some will be good, but some will be bad. When he leaves, you can't replace him. 500k engineers won't work for a place where you just maintain the system the last guy designed and wrote - they want to design and write their own stuff from scratch. I could go on, but programming depts of 1 are usually a bad idea...