Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the text, it is not what you think
OP means appending ` (2000)` to the title as a year-published annotation, to disambiguate from current events. This is commonly done on HN.
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What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
101–110 of 119 posts
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#102Real Story Here. A colleague and I developed a training course on the Foundations of DevOps. We started the course off with a discussion about risk in Software Delivery and IT in general. Attendees would often surface the "Key-Person Risk" or the "Hit by a Bus Risk" to which we would use as a teachable moment for pair programming, cross pollination, and measuring and improving the time it takes for new joins to becom…
Cheapest would be to tie Linus to a chair and make him work under strict security instead of creating some strategy to work around this.
Sacrificing one human for maintaining millions of computers with millions of users and billions of economic dollar isn't a bad deal.
In China this would have been the main solution to this problem.
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
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? E…
I will never do consulting again for a former employee unless I get paid upfront. A previous employer "adjusted" an incredibly reasonable bill. Then two months later their nginx server goes down and he calls me in a panic. I required them to deliver the check before I even took a look at it. Out of spite I charged him a near egregious amount because of that. On the plus side the office manager had a grin on her face, she forced the owner to pay the full amount of the previous bill. She thought it was incredibly underhanded.
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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? E…
Yep. In every company I've been in here in the UK, I have pretty much never heard of an ex employee returning to explain their work, fix a bug, do training, etc. And well, the more people leave a company, the less likely they are to come back to help at all, cause of a 'toxic' atmosphere or sub par working conditions.
I think pride plays its part here. People want to prove that they could indeed cope without the person. I think there is also the point where people think, "we are going to have to learn this stuff one day, it may as well be now".
In some key-person areas long notice periods (3months, for instance) are the norm. However this is never going to be the most productive 3 months of anyone's life! Serving 3 months notice becomes very dull by the end...
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#105Speaking of getting hit by a bus, a friend and I are considering a consulting service that could help mitigate bus factor risk - would love any feedback on this idea. We've both noticed that for nontechnical owners of small businesses that have a heavy software component, that owner is completely at the mercy of their lead developer. If that person leaves or "gets hit by a bus" their company might just die, especiall…
Over on the Let's Encrypt Community Forum we get quite a few inquiries from people who say "I'm the site owner and my developer [disappeared|quit|was only hired for a one-time setup task] and my certificate expired; how do I renew it?". I assume this is a really common pattern for web sites in general. :-( I don't imagine that this segment would be interested in paying for "continuity insurance", but they might grudg…
> I don't imagine that this segment would be interested in paying for "continuity insurance", but they might grudgingly hire someone for "tech rescue". I guess that's a very different kind of service; I'm not sure if there's anything in between the two.
Very sadly I find myself agreeing with your assessment in general. However I was once seeking almost exactly this service, and I have to say I struggled to find what I wanted.
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#106Real Story Here. A colleague and I developed a training course on the Foundations of DevOps. We started the course off with a discussion about risk in Software Delivery and IT in general. Attendees would often surface the "Key-Person Risk" or the "Hit by a Bus Risk" to which we would use as a teachable moment for pair programming, cross pollination, and measuring and improving the time it takes for new joins to becom…
Why didn't you instead have life insurance for each other?
You could have moved much faster allowing for a far greater chance of success.
I understand it's a metaphor but you have been quite literal.
In relationships this is how people solve this worry, I think business partnerships would be similar.
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#107On a much smaller scale, I realized that I am probably the only person in my group (of stage/ audiovisual technical folks) who understands everything fully: I'm stopping next year, so I'm documenting how to do everything I do. You can never have too much documentation - which isn't exactly what this dilemma is about - but still it raises an interesting bit of planning which should always be considered.
Before I left my first job, I made a document called "Koen's brain dump" where I would document anything that only I knew.
Years later I heard from my ex-colleagues that they not only used my brain dump, but were still extending it.
Seems like I was getting smarter without me ever realizing it ;).
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#108What about Antirez? I guess no one knew him back in 2000...
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
1.5 to 3 years doesn’t seem to be too far off the mark. https://insights.dice.com/2016/07/08/how-long-do-tech-pros-s...
Hmm, data compiled from "Public Profiles". I wonder where they got "Public Profiles", listing people's profession and length of tenure. Could it be places like LinkedIn or Dice, and could it be that such places overrepresent engineers inclined to switch jobs? Personally, I'd be disinclined to interview a candidate with >= 3 jobs on the resumé, none of which lasted longer than 2 years. Taking into account the time spe…
Well,two points.
- Salary compression especially early on in your career is real. Most companies don’t do market adjustments after you are hired and only adjust salaries by a predetermined very low amount. The only way to get market salaries is by frequent job changes.
- If you have a job and people are willing to hire a job hopper, why not leave? At some point it will be a negative but when that time comes, just stay at a job until you get a better one. Also, if you do change jobs make sure it’s for the right reasons. For me, it’s technology, environment, and money in that order.
Re: What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)
#110Earlier 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
Hmm. Been at the same company over five years because there were drastic changes/new things every six months. Luckily they were able to do a few promotions and stuff... :)