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I don't believe Bus Factor was invented by an HR person. I believe it was invented by ... probably an engineer, actually as a reflection of "something irreversi

I don't believe Bus Factor was invented by an HR person. I believe it was invented by ... probably an engineer, actually as a reflection of "something irreversible". A person who gets married or wins the lottery might be able to be contacted to help; but, if they're dead or in a coma, there's no communication. It's a way of putting weight into something that a company might actually understand.

oxygen_crisis 3y ago
It's definitely not HR language, they are especially squeamish about evoking gruesome images like a person being run down in the street by a bus. Wikipedia's sources suggest it's a metaphor conjured by developers, as you suggested: > An early instance of this sort of query was when Michael McLay publicly asked, in 1994, what would happen to the Python language if Guido van Rossum were to be hit by a bus. > "Truck number" was already a recurring concept in the Organizational Patterns [of agile software development] book published in 2004, itself an evolution of the work published in the first book of the Pattern Languages of Program Design series in 1995, which was the publication record of the first Pattern Languages of Programs conference in August 1994, where it was referenced in patterns including Solo Virtuoso. ... It was seen in engineering by 2003, and the Debian project in 2005.
- slyall 3y ago
  I always got the impression it was actually quite neutral. One day the employee was gone due to an unexpected external force. Neither the employee's nor employer's fault. It is a lot less neutral to say an employee was "fired" or "quit"
  - oxygen_crisis 3y ago
    It's distastefully ghoulish and trivializes the trauma of people who have lost loved ones to vehicle accidents. For anyone who hasn't led a wonderfully sheltered life that lets them conceptualize the situation as if it were something out of a "Looney Tunes" cartoon, it's going to evoke imagery of pools of blood and viscera on asphalt. Not the kind of mentality you'd usually expect from an HR department.
    - cultureswitch 3y ago
      Still more humane than "terminated"
MichaelMoser123 3y ago
maybe not invented by an HR person, but they seem to have adopted this expression. Do you agree?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

oxygen_crisis 3y ago

It's definitely not HR language, they are especially squeamish about evoking gruesome images like a person being run down in the street by a bus. Wikipedia's sources suggest it's a metaphor conjured by developers, as you suggested: > An early instance of this sort of query was when Michael McLay publicly asked, in 1994, what would happen to the Python language if Guido van Rossum were to be hit by a bus. > "Truck number" was already a recurring concept in the Organizational Patterns [of agile software development] book published in 2004, itself an evolution of the work published in the first book of the Pattern Languages of Program Design series in 1995, which was the publication record of the first Pattern Languages of Programs conference in August 1994, where it was referenced in patterns including Solo Virtuoso. ... It was seen in engineering by 2003, and the Debian project in 2005.

slyall 3y ago
I always got the impression it was actually quite neutral. One day the employee was gone due to an unexpected external force. Neither the employee's nor employer's fault. It is a lot less neutral to say an employee was "fired" or "quit"
- oxygen_crisis 3y ago
  It's distastefully ghoulish and trivializes the trauma of people who have lost loved ones to vehicle accidents. For anyone who hasn't led a wonderfully sheltered life that lets them conceptualize the situation as if it were something out of a "Looney Tunes" cartoon, it's going to evoke imagery of pools of blood and viscera on asphalt. Not the kind of mentality you'd usually expect from an HR department.
  - cultureswitch 3y ago
    Still more humane than "terminated"

MichaelMoser123 3y ago

maybe not invented by an HR person, but they seem to have adopted this expression. Do you agree?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]