“Failure of leadership”
Yeah. Always cross train, always document. What if John had died?
What if John had died?
Ah yes, the car/train/plane crash argument.
Bus factor.
Honestly, it sounds like John was a problem and needed to be fired a long time ago, before he created this unmaintainable mess.
I agree that John was the problem, but I think it was management responsibly to fix. Either through some coaching or as you say, before he became business-critical.
Every single other person could also be called the problem, because they knowingly let John do all the work, and apparently weren’t interested in sharing the responsibility.
If someone else is getting paid the most amount of money, I’m happy to let the most amount of work fall to them. “Sharing the responsibility” doesn’t make sense if I don’t get to share the reward. It’s a company, not a community or a family.
It could happen that way. More often, the company can’t or won’t get them back.
basically where I work right now. our John sadly tried their best but the company did not hire any more engineers. he was the sole engineer for about 7 years and everything is built from the ground up by him. John came across weird issues and used a very stinky legacy language to fix those issues.
about 9 years into his career they hired Andy and Andy tried to make as much sense of John’s code but it was challenging and for the next 5 or so years millions of dollars ran through an application made by 2 developers.
anyways now I’m getting paid a lot of money because John does consulting and Andy found a way better job, but I also get the “house of cards” questions a lot.
I think management thinks they can replace me as well because I came in here and things seem to be running after Andy’s departure.
But if I quit or they fire me the entire company is going under as the next engineers in line will simply quit