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Comment by Sevii | Hacker News Reader

People really don't talk about landslide risk enough. A project with a high tech debt or operations burden is at high risk of losing enough people to zero out the project. Lose one or two people at the same time and suddenly the rest of the team is in an untenable situation. Maybe they were thinking casually about leaving before, but now that their burden has increased by 30% its more serious. Then you just keep losing people until the project fails. Can be basically impossible to restaff the project.

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Indeed, I've seen two instances of this. First, early in my career, a company was acquired and had a layoff leaving a skeleton crew in IT and development. People remaining did not have the knowledge or experience to deploy or maintain the applications. That company had a week of down time where business just halted. No purchases were made, nothing previously purchased shipped, no calls to customer service were answered.

The second time was when I was an engineering manager and 3/4 of our team quit for high pay within 6 months. Our application was a line of business app with a few thousand users. Our release dates went from being delayed a few months to over a year. The companies reputation was horrid, and hiring was impossible. My boss, a Director, sent me support people who could spell "java" and expected me train them from zero. I left that disaster soon after.

So yes, the risk is real, and the result can be calamitous.

I have confessed this before and it’s appropriate to confess it again here: I have worked places where there was an onerous task that three of us split. When one of those quits, I’m looking to leave too. Not only does being the last one take away any illusions of autonomy you might have had, but it also makes you feel guilty for leaving because you know that some things won’t get done at all.

My body metabolizes guilt readily, by converting it into resentment. “I have to be here and I hate you for it.” Is not a room anyone should walk into if there’s another doorway.

I don't think that's unavoidable, but businesses typically fail to correctly reassess the value of those employees.

If the business responded appropriately, I think people could be convinced to stay.

E.g. if they offered:

1: An instant promotion with raise for anyone not at the max level for an IC, to acknowledge that they are now the most knowledgeable people on that product.

2: Double pay until those slots are filled and newbies are trained.

3: A contract saying they get a month of PTO when the slots are filled and newbies trained.

4: Assurances that they are offering above-market rates to get the slots filled quickly (which should still be lower than the new rates for people who stayed).

What usually gets offered is pittances. A 10% raise to work 30% more hours. Maybe some flex time. It doesn't make sense for workers to stay, they can usually get better benefits and lower working hours by leaving anyways. Businesses need to offer substantially more than employees can get elsewhere.

Especially when they are going to have to spend that much to get new hires in anyway, who still have to get caught up to speed, it seems like this would make a lot of sense.

But I can understand how it is difficult for a business leader to convince himself that this jump in cost is, in fact, required. Maybe the person will just stick around? (And indeed, they do fairly often.)

I worked at a place where we had an open dev/support slot for multiple months to cope with increased load due to our success. In the meantime we all just did more support and less dev. My suggestion to management that the existing team split the salary of the open rec until it was filled (since we were doing the work anyway) was met with just short of outright laughter.

> What usually gets offered is pittances. A 10% raise to work 30% more hours.

At least in my instance, I've never seen the 10% raise, just the 30% more hours bit.

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