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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)

#42

Post by JorgeGT »

aasasd wrote: post #35
znpy wrote: post #29

I am bothered by the fact that Linus is made plural as "Linus Torvaldses" and not "Lini Torvalds".

I'm pretty sure he's not a Roman but a Finn. (I'm also quite sure most languages today aren't Latin, namely English isn't. But what do I know, English speakers seem to have a different opinion.)

Finland is the heir of the Roman Empire though: https://i.imgur.com/eNuUdTd.png

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

#45

Post by gammateam »

danso wrote: post #22
TomK32 wrote: post #15

I got hit by a bus two years ago, granted it was more of a rude push by the side of the bus that I was riding for 6 hours from Athens to its last stop Preveza and the bus driver was just about to park his bus, but getting hit by a bus is not necessary lethal. I simply got back on my feet and dusted my pants.

I don’t think the posted article is referring to non-lethal bus collisions.

Actually it factors that in too

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

#47

Post by IanCal »

matte_black wrote: post #14
geofft wrote: 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…

I don’t like when people use “wins the lottery” because it leads to distracting tangents. A person that wins a lottery could do anything. How much did they win? Maybe they’ll still keep working? Maybe they’ll go off to start their own company and take a bunch of key employees with them? Maybe they’ll be broke in a year and come back to their job? Maybe they don’t leave right away? These are just distractions you don’…

I think it's pretty clear what's meant by it, and "hit by a bus" has very similar problems if taken too seriously. Were they hurt? Are they out for a few days, just shaken, decide to change their approach to life etc.

> How much did they win? Maybe they’ll still keep working? Maybe they’ll go off to start their own company and take a bunch of key employees with them? Maybe they’ll be broke in a year and come back to their job? Maybe they don’t leave right away?

Well exactly. You don't know, and now you've given yourself four scenarios to think through:

1. Employee remains.

2. Employee leaves forever, maybe with others.

3. Employee leaves for a while but would come back.

4. Employee leaves, but with some time to plan.

1 should not be a difficult thing to plan for, and 2-4 all ask the same major question of "what if they leave". There's perhaps a slight benefit of not having to say "well assuming you are dead..." - I know I've had some time this year where I was trying not to focus on a death.

The key point is the risk. If your answer to "what if X wins the lottery" is "well as long as they don't want to leave..." then you're already setting yourself up to answer the question it's intended to propose - what if they are no longer working for the company?

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

#48

Post by gammateam »

mywittyname wrote: post #40
gammateam wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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

#49

Post by Waterluvian »

an-allen wrote: post #5

Real 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…

We had a colleague pass away abruptly a month-ish ago. So much disappeared with him. And I kept finding myself typing out, "oh ____ would know that" before reality caught up with me.

It started to get really frustrating and upsetting. I'm not exactly a "pair programming" zealot but I definitely find value in overlap of responsibilities.

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