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Comment by ZuLuuuuuu | Hacker News Reader

I am the developer which literally got hit by a bus, AMA!

I miraculously survived the accident with many broken bones and got back to work in about 3 months. And now it puts a smile on my face whenever I see the term "bus factor". And it probably scared our company quite a bit because I was the only software engineer, so definitely a bus factor of 1. But our company is mainly not a software company so they managed to survive with minimal support from me until I got back.

So yeah, it can happen! Be careful when crossing the street!

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Glad to hear you're ok!

If you see enough companies over a long enough time these risks materialize with great regularity. Common reasons: burn out (probably #1), underpaid and undervalued so easily 'poached' (I don't like that term but don't have a better one),chronic illness, accidents, death. The latter is fortunately rare, two instances across 200+ companies across 15 years.

But the other ones happen frequently enough to take them serious. Most companies, unless they are very small are usually able to mitigate this to a very large degree without breaking the bank.

That is a good point. Fortunately, I do feel like I am valued in this company. But at that time, I was relatively new in this company and I have moved from another country to work at this company. So I was eager to prove myself to them and was doing overtime regularly, which might have played a role in my carelessness (or is "reverie" the correct word?) at the split second of the accident.

You could say "underpaid and undervalued so they leave" which places the agency in the right place and covers strictly more situations. You don't need to be actively recruited in a market with pay differentials this large.

> 'poached' (I don't like that term but don't have a better one)

How about just saying that they left? 'Poached' puts the agency in the hands of their new employer, as if the person was cattle and their job change was due to cattle rustlin'. (Not that some management doesn't look at it that way.)

That's exactly how it is though: without their new employer reaching out with an offer the default is for people to stick around.

that should put the argument to rest, then. the bus factor is not a problem, the data shows that software developers survive being hit by a bus

Beware of Survivorship-Bias :-)

This almost had my monitor plastered with dirty moon chai. :)

I'm confused, the parent comment made me laugh while I was drinking a chai latte from https://summermooncoffee.com/pages/standard-menu-summer-moon... made with their moon milk and a shot of espresso ... I'm not sure what people find offensive/bad about that?

Im sorry for your accident, but it its a funny thing to imagine the upper echelon sneaking into the hospital, to install eye-tracking software and a beamer on someone who is almost a cast-mumy. Imagine waking up after a accident, and a nervous intern sits besides you, instead of a loved one, trying to coax the passwords out of you before you pass.

This reminds me of the beginning of "The Da Vinci Code".

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

I have a significantly less happy story in this regard: I had just started at a new company, and the lead engineer went off to a holiday. On the drive up, he was struck and killed by a truck. He had the credentials for a lot of things that were core to the company. We got access to the AWS Account without too much trouble, after two weeks to receive a paper letter from them, but a few things were a real pain in the ass to recover.

It was really a tragic occurrence, and very sad - Curtis was a great engineer. I think my drink tonight will be to him.

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