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edw519

As a single proprietor/founder/programmer, I've heard this "worse-case" question far too many times:

"What happens if you get hit by a bus?"

I have no good answer, but I have lots of bad answers:

"Can't happen. There are no buses where I live."

"I work out. The bus will get damaged."

"If I don't log in 3 days in a row, the server will automatically ftp all the source code to you."

"No problem. I have Blue Cross."

"No problem. All the code is self-documented."

"I guess I won't care anymore."

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Heh, now I feel weird. I work for a big corporation and I've been trying to make them worry about the "hit by a bus problem". Imagine having a very critical part of your application, without which your business logic can't run. Imagine that this part could bring down the production database server. Imagine that there's only one guy who knows the heart of that part of the system and almost no documentation at all.

Now imagine the situation in which that guy is trying -- and failing -- to make his bosses care about that...

Sounds like you should be threatening to leave the company unless better compensated. While you're out, you could write the documentation that doesn't exist and sell it back to them :).

Threatening can erode the relationship.

The conclusion to the "hit by a bus" problem is correct, even if the argument to get there is wrong.

It's still correct to spread knowledge around as much as possible. First, it prevents a single person from becoming a bottleneck in development. Second, a better understanding of the rest of the system helps developers understand their assignment better.

> "What happens if you get hit by a bus?"

Put it this way: by hiring an unneeded developer you are betting circa $100k a year that you will be hit by a bus. From that point of view it seems like a losing bet.

When people say "get hit by the bus" in this context, it means "decide you don't wanna work here anymore and leave".

I'm aware of that. My point was that rather than just look at the potential problems it should be viewed as a tradeoff. Hiring a larger group of people is less risky but will cost you more.

Thing is, "hit by a bus" is a larger range of situations than the cliche suggests.

It's not just "hit by a bus", "wins the lottery", or "decides to quit". It could be: "takes a vacation". "Gets snowed in" (generic weather disaster that cuts travel and communication). It could even be "sick".

The bet looks a lot worse when you realize it's just saying "this one guy won't so much as catch the flu".

And hiring isn't the only corrective action. Making time for documentation, automation, cross-training -- these are all significantly cheaper and still tip the bet well back into your favor.

> Making time for documentation, automation, cross-training ...

Inside an existing company I would totally agree with you. I'm not in any way advocating for the job-security hoarder of information.

Being a freelancer, when I've been presented with this question it always seems like they really mean "but we could hire 5 coders from massive outsourcing company X for the same price". It is frustrating to try and convey the idea that, even when various metaphorical bus accidents are taken into account, the large well known company is not necessarily the safest option.

No amount of documentation or automation will assure someone who really just wants to be able to say "I chose IBM, it's not my fault it went wrong".

I don't know -- two of the jobs I had were right next to a bus depot. It was actually a risk :-D

The right answer here is to ask another question:

"Well, what would happen if you were hit by a bus?" or "what would happen if an asteroid collided with our building?"

I.e. illustrate the silliness of designing your solution around statistical outliers.

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