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> project management risks: “Lead developer hit by bus” > software engineering risks: “The server may not scale to 1000 users” > You should distinguish them

> project management risks: “Lead developer hit by bus” > software engineering risks: “The server may not scale to 1000 users” > You should distinguish them because engineering techniques rarely solve management risks, and vice versa. It's not so rare in my experience. Code quality and organization, tests and documentation, using standard and well known tools - all of those would help both sides here. That's why I've had to invoke the "hit by bus" hypothetical so many times in my career with colleagues and bosses, because it's a forcing function for reproducible and understandable software. Pro tip: use "win the lottery" instead to avoid the negative connotation of injury or death.

ollien 2y ago
I've heard that positive spin responded to with "this company is my biggest investment, I'm not going anywhere" :)
ajanuary 2y ago
> Pro tip: use "win the lottery" instead to avoid the negative connotation of injury or death. I very much appreciate the attempt to reframe it positively. But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover. The key thing with “hit by a bus” is, no matter what your personality, you don’t have any time to prepare. Thats why you’ve got to get the information out there today. Unfortunately I’ve yet to find a positive spin that has those same connotations.
- devsda 2y ago
  Depends on the other person, but "gets hit by a bus or abducted by aliens" or some other (movie) trope doesn't sound too bad if it's an informal discussion.
  - serial_dev 2y ago
    I dislike the "hit by the bus" not because it hypothetically kills a team mate, but because it implies that if one of us dies, the key worry of the management is who left who knows how to deploy the foo-banana service. This phrase is a reminder that nobody would care if you died apart from the fact that only you know how to do x and y. "Abducted by an alien" is so absurd, it takes away all that and replaces it with something potentially fun and an experience of a lifetime. I also very much prefer the lottery example, and the fact that someone on HN would still do a handover doesn't change that fact.
    - Ma8ee 2y ago
      > the key worry of the management is who left who knows how to deploy the foo-banana service. While it might be uncomfortable to be reminded of, it is in most cases true. The company isn’t your family or your friends, and most managers adhere to the doctrine that the single important responsibility of the company is to create value for the stock holders.
    - wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
      Not that I am trying to make you upset, but I personally find this level of sensetivity in people annoying. Life and death metaphors are my right to enjoy and share irreverently as the mortal being I am.
      - arcanemachiner 2y ago
        I died reading this comment.
        bombela 2y ago
        But did you hand over your knowledge first?
      - mnsc 2y ago
        So you would be OK if I used "abducted and gang raped for so long that you come out seemingly alive and physically intact but your mind has broke and you enter a catatonic state and can't do a handover" as an example? Because if you are not one of those "sensitive people" you should be able to focus on the "can't do a handover" part of the scenario and not get caught up in the gruesome part? And before you ask, yes I enjoy being overly graphic like this on the pseudonumoyous internet to exaggerate my points but I wouldn't do this irl. That is hypocritical of me.
        mirekrusin 2y ago
        Depends if aliens were attractive?
- cryptonector 2y ago
  "Key person risk" captures all the possibilities.
- arendtio 2y ago
  > But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover. I wonder why we talk about such rare events. People get sick, and burnout is very common, too. Some people look for a new job, and when they find it, they call in sick just to not have to handle all the stress of their old job. There are plenty of more likely examples of not having a handover.
- ijidak 2y ago
  - Kidnapped to paradise - Abducted by beautiful aliens
- crabmusket 2y ago
  "Taken by the Rapture"?
- DanHulton 2y ago
  "Doing a handover" won't save a lot of companies. There's no level of "handover" that will save some of the shops I've been in, that just 100% rely on one team member to handle _everything._ Even if they took a _month_ to try to pass along along their accumulated knowledge, there's ingrained engineering practices and processes that all boil down to "Go ask Chris." Honestly, I'd say that if you're able to do a handover in two weeks, and that covers everything it needs to cover? Well, then probably the handover isn't _actually_ necessary, and anything you cover in those two weeks could probably be figured out by a reasonably competent teammate. Knowledge is rarely the issue, being a person-shaped load-bearing component for your team _is._ (But also, good on you for taking a bit of time to make sure your old co-workers aren't left in the lurch. It probably also gives a bit of time to consider what you _really_ want to do with the winnings, so as not to blow it all in the first year like a lot of lottery winners do.)
  - chipdart 2y ago
    > "Doing a handover" won't save a lot of companies. There's no level of "handover" that will save some of the shops I've been in, that just 100% rely on one team member to handle _everything._ Even if they took a _month_ to try to pass along along their accumulated knowledge, there's ingrained engineering practices and processes that all boil down to "Go ask Chris." That might very well be true, but to a manager having a handover means the problem of loss of institutional knowledge is solved, and any subsequent problem due to lack of context or loss of institutional knowledge is avoidable and caused by poor handovers.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover. How much time are you devoting to it? Enough for the project to ship, which could take months or a year, or merely enough to hastily give some other devs a breakdown of the thing, and "so long suckers" / hope for the best? And, while you might (still do a handover), would others?
- RadiozRadioz 2y ago
  I don't like "win the lottery" because it implies that the sole reason for the person staying is money; it devalues their loyalty to the team. Everyone's working for money in reality of course, but to me it doesn't feel team-spirited to call it out.
- euroderf 2y ago
  Good documentation will commit as much as possible to paper: to turn the implicit into the explicit. But then ya gotta keep it up to date.
foooorsyth 2y ago
“Win the lottery” doesn’t really work in tech. So many mid career engineers are deca-millionaires with 15-20 years of grants and refreshers. They’re working because they enjoy the work. Even at “regular” companies that don’t have hockey stick stock graphs, lots of the senior engineering staff are quite well off by their 40s. One of my division leads sold his last startup for 10s of millions of dollars. He still send emails late on Friday nights.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Maybe in silicon valley. Not in the vast majority of the tech world.
Scarblac 2y ago
It's happened twice now during my career that important colleagues were literally hit by buses. And both were back to work in about a week. I need a different standard example disaster.
gofreddygo 2y ago
> Pro tip: use "win the lottery" instead to avoid the negative connotation of injury or death. Win the lottery is still quite an euphemism for a more common outcome - getting laid off. I use "the next person" more often to drive the point. And there's the worse situation of "burnout" where you still have headcount but they've mentally checked out.
skeeter2020 2y ago
How about "takes a 3 week vacation"? I've seen lots of companies that can't survive that let alone a permanent departure. Or "increase bus count" which refers to removing a single point of failure and focuses on the motivation vs the cause of why you're in trouble. If you were doing root cause analysis you shouldn't stop at "because Larry got hit by a bus / won the lottery" because that's not the issue.
rixed 2y ago
> using standard and well known tools - all of those would help both sides here. What if standard tools become unnecessarily complicated and are poorly designed ?

ollien 2y ago

I've heard that positive spin responded to with "this company is my biggest investment, I'm not going anywhere" :)

ajanuary 2y ago

> Pro tip: use "win the lottery" instead to avoid the negative connotation of injury or death. I very much appreciate the attempt to reframe it positively. But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover. The key thing with “hit by a bus” is, no matter what your personality, you don’t have any time to prepare. Thats why you’ve got to get the information out there today. Unfortunately I’ve yet to find a positive spin that has those same connotations.

devsda 2y ago
Depends on the other person, but "gets hit by a bus or abducted by aliens" or some other (movie) trope doesn't sound too bad if it's an informal discussion.
- serial_dev 2y ago
  I dislike the "hit by the bus" not because it hypothetically kills a team mate, but because it implies that if one of us dies, the key worry of the management is who left who knows how to deploy the foo-banana service. This phrase is a reminder that nobody would care if you died apart from the fact that only you know how to do x and y. "Abducted by an alien" is so absurd, it takes away all that and replaces it with something potentially fun and an experience of a lifetime. I also very much prefer the lottery example, and the fact that someone on HN would still do a handover doesn't change that fact.
  - Ma8ee 2y ago
    > the key worry of the management is who left who knows how to deploy the foo-banana service. While it might be uncomfortable to be reminded of, it is in most cases true. The company isn’t your family or your friends, and most managers adhere to the doctrine that the single important responsibility of the company is to create value for the stock holders.
  - wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
    Not that I am trying to make you upset, but I personally find this level of sensetivity in people annoying. Life and death metaphors are my right to enjoy and share irreverently as the mortal being I am.
    - arcanemachiner 2y ago
      I died reading this comment.
      - bombela 2y ago
        But did you hand over your knowledge first?
    - mnsc 2y ago
      So you would be OK if I used "abducted and gang raped for so long that you come out seemingly alive and physically intact but your mind has broke and you enter a catatonic state and can't do a handover" as an example? Because if you are not one of those "sensitive people" you should be able to focus on the "can't do a handover" part of the scenario and not get caught up in the gruesome part? And before you ask, yes I enjoy being overly graphic like this on the pseudonumoyous internet to exaggerate my points but I wouldn't do this irl. That is hypocritical of me.
      - mirekrusin 2y ago
        Depends if aliens were attractive?
cryptonector 2y ago
"Key person risk" captures all the possibilities.
arendtio 2y ago
> But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover. I wonder why we talk about such rare events. People get sick, and burnout is very common, too. Some people look for a new job, and when they find it, they call in sick just to not have to handle all the stress of their old job. There are plenty of more likely examples of not having a handover.
ijidak 2y ago
- Kidnapped to paradise - Abducted by beautiful aliens
crabmusket 2y ago
"Taken by the Rapture"?
DanHulton 2y ago
"Doing a handover" won't save a lot of companies. There's no level of "handover" that will save some of the shops I've been in, that just 100% rely on one team member to handle _everything._ Even if they took a _month_ to try to pass along along their accumulated knowledge, there's ingrained engineering practices and processes that all boil down to "Go ask Chris." Honestly, I'd say that if you're able to do a handover in two weeks, and that covers everything it needs to cover? Well, then probably the handover isn't _actually_ necessary, and anything you cover in those two weeks could probably be figured out by a reasonably competent teammate. Knowledge is rarely the issue, being a person-shaped load-bearing component for your team _is._ (But also, good on you for taking a bit of time to make sure your old co-workers aren't left in the lurch. It probably also gives a bit of time to consider what you _really_ want to do with the winnings, so as not to blow it all in the first year like a lot of lottery winners do.)
- chipdart 2y ago
  > "Doing a handover" won't save a lot of companies. There's no level of "handover" that will save some of the shops I've been in, that just 100% rely on one team member to handle _everything._ Even if they took a _month_ to try to pass along along their accumulated knowledge, there's ingrained engineering practices and processes that all boil down to "Go ask Chris." That might very well be true, but to a manager having a handover means the problem of loss of institutional knowledge is solved, and any subsequent problem due to lack of context or loss of institutional knowledge is avoidable and caused by poor handovers.
coldtea 2y ago
>But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover. How much time are you devoting to it? Enough for the project to ship, which could take months or a year, or merely enough to hastily give some other devs a breakdown of the thing, and "so long suckers" / hope for the best? And, while you might (still do a handover), would others?
RadiozRadioz 2y ago
I don't like "win the lottery" because it implies that the sole reason for the person staying is money; it devalues their loyalty to the team. Everyone's working for money in reality of course, but to me it doesn't feel team-spirited to call it out.
euroderf 2y ago
Good documentation will commit as much as possible to paper: to turn the implicit into the explicit. But then ya gotta keep it up to date.

foooorsyth 2y ago

“Win the lottery” doesn’t really work in tech. So many mid career engineers are deca-millionaires with 15-20 years of grants and refreshers. They’re working because they enjoy the work. Even at “regular” companies that don’t have hockey stick stock graphs, lots of the senior engineering staff are quite well off by their 40s. One of my division leads sold his last startup for 10s of millions of dollars. He still send emails late on Friday nights.

IshKebab 2y ago
Maybe in silicon valley. Not in the vast majority of the tech world.

Scarblac 2y ago

It's happened twice now during my career that important colleagues were literally hit by buses. And both were back to work in about a week. I need a different standard example disaster.

gofreddygo 2y ago

> Pro tip: use "win the lottery" instead to avoid the negative connotation of injury or death. Win the lottery is still quite an euphemism for a more common outcome - getting laid off. I use "the next person" more often to drive the point. And there's the worse situation of "burnout" where you still have headcount but they've mentally checked out.

skeeter2020 2y ago

How about "takes a 3 week vacation"? I've seen lots of companies that can't survive that let alone a permanent departure. Or "increase bus count" which refers to removing a single point of failure and focuses on the motivation vs the cause of why you're in trouble. If you were doing root cause analysis you shouldn't stop at "because Larry got hit by a bus / won the lottery" because that's not the issue.

rixed 2y ago

> using standard and well known tools - all of those would help both sides here. What if standard tools become unnecessarily complicated and are poorly designed ?