I think rather frequently the impact of such a "rare" event could indeed be company-breakingly critical, depending on which part of the company that team was ru

I think rather frequently the impact of such a "rare" event could indeed be company-breakingly critical, depending on which part of the company that team was running. As a thought experiment, if all DBAs left tomorrow and the database fell over the next day, how much time would the next-most-capable person need to figure out the backup policies and scripts, restore the db and bring everything back up? I've personally seen this sink a company outright. It's only anecdotal evidence ofc, but it is still something that happens. Worse, people leaving a team are not independent events. People leaving a certain team is often highly correlated to other people leaving the same team, because there is some common cause like a toxic manager.