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What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

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Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#52
post #28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very sorry for your loss. I've heard "wins the lottery" as a less morbid metaphor for the same concept: one of your employees stops working in a low-probability event. Of course the higher-probability event is leaving their job (but somehow it's less polite to just say that); you usually get two weeks to hurriedly start documenting things, and with the current state of employee/employer relations you might easily…

the problem with 'wins the lottery' as a metaphor to me is basically that one is calling the winner a jerk.. if I suddenly could retire without a care in the world, I probably wouldn't mind dropping in for a day or two every now and again for knowledge transfer, even if I didn't like the company overall, to help my teammates..

At my job we say "hit by the lottery bus" to make it clear that we're using a euphemism for "what if this person quits".

Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#53
post #28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very sorry for your loss. I've heard "wins the lottery" as a less morbid metaphor for the same concept: one of your employees stops working in a low-probability event. Of course the higher-probability event is leaving their job (but somehow it's less polite to just say that); you usually get two weeks to hurriedly start documenting things, and with the current state of employee/employer relations you might easily…

the problem with 'wins the lottery' as a metaphor to me is basically that one is calling the winner a jerk.. if I suddenly could retire without a care in the world, I probably wouldn't mind dropping in for a day or two every now and again for knowledge transfer, even if I didn't like the company overall, to help my teammates..

I am the same way, but we are not the norm. In fact, most people don't even want to provide the occasional consulting once they leave the team (but stay at the company), let alone the company. There's also the problem of where to draw the line. Is a quick question ok? What about a bunch of questions? What about asking for a training session? What if the question requires diving back in to the source code to answer? Everybody has a different opinion and tolerance threshold.

Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#55
post #4
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the text, it is not what you think

I did read the text. It's humorous. But the question itself is no less important. And considering what happened with Torvalds' position this year, one might think it is a follow up to that question. So I think adding '(2000)' would definitely be helpful, if not just accurate.

> what happened with Torvalds' position this year

Read: He went on vacation for five weeks.

Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is the norm outside of SV. I typically stay four years at a position and almost every interview I've had, people will comment about how short of a tenure that is. It's definitely not unusual for developers to stay in roles for a decade or more. Especially very good ones.

Its not the norm outside VC-backed tech land There is just a lot of stuff to build and a salary that needs to increase 30% every other year

I see all the comments about needing huge pay bumps every 2-3 years and then I also see things about how you can’t get a job in sv over 40. I wonder if it’s related

Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, "hits by a bus" is actually the euphemism. The highest probability way to lose an employee is just the employee quitting to work somewhere else. But you can't say that because it implies that your current workplace is suboptimal. Whereas "hits by a bus" is out of the control of your employer, so safe to say...

Devs stay in one place like 15 months Occassionally a 2 year stint just so some Gen X-er that reviews their resume’ doesnt consider them too noncommittal No need to mince words about people leaving

Mind providing a source for this? I read this all the time but it doesn't match my experience here in Germany.

Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#58
I'm curious how startups or venture capitalists handle risk around DevOps, especially certificates, encryption keys, access to dns/domain names etc.

Legal processes take time, you typically need this info quickly in production. I'm not a VC, but if I was, I would want a backup plan in place before handing over an XX Million $ check. A smaller startup, or a seed level/pre-launch team may only have 1 or 2 founders with "admin" level access to this info.

I always thought a "Swiss bank account" type service for DevOps would be useful. It could handle this situation in a modern way (with a secure, modern API etc) and would execute a certain disaster recovery plan reliably.

Obviously centralizing that kind of data/ would be a security nightmare in itself. I'm curious how a larger VC with many companies deals with this consistently.

I know there are services available in different areas that specialize in handling certain data (corporate branding/identity, domain names etc) but not as a whole.

Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#59
I want to ask a genuine question to folks here about disaster recovery and management. It sounds pretty horrible, but at what point do you just throw up your hands and give up? How many people in your company would need to be hit by a bus? Or maybe if aws went down completely for a week? I guess I'm wondering: how far into the rabbit hole must we go?

I guess the changes of a coworker passing away are more than aws going down for a week. I guess I'm just overwhelmed by how many scenarios we need to plan for.

Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)

#60
post #58

I'm curious how startups or venture capitalists handle risk around DevOps, especially certificates, encryption keys, access to dns/domain names etc. Legal processes take time, you typically need this info quickly in production. I'm not a VC, but if I was, I would want a backup plan in place before handing over an XX Million $ check. A smaller startup, or a seed level/pre-launch team may only have 1 or 2 founders with…

> Swiss bank account" type service for DevOps

What does this mean? That nobody has access to production systems except devops?

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