The ladder comment is about the Ping-Pong tournaments regularly held in the office.
From the comment it's pretty obvious this is a two person job and getting a single dev is a business mistake.
From the comment it's pretty obvious this is a two person job and getting a single dev is a business mistake.
There's no way that wasn't intended to have a double meaning.
Even if they find someone who's just as skilled and motivated, that person won't have the key experience of "I built all this" and will have to spend a much larger fraction of time on maintenance/extension.
Ultimately PA will have to hire multiple people to do all this stuff. If they're smart they'll recognize it now, rather than when the smart, motivated person they do hire starts to fail.