> The best is a senior engineer who can spit out the skeleton of B for junior engineers to work on

That's what person A does.

Agreed that having a super senior engineers is bad for the bus factor (FYI people are calling it the lottery factor now, as in "what if they won the lottery and retired") but sometimes you don't have the luxury of having backup people.

That's silly though because even if they won the lottery they'd probably at least have an exit period while they sorted out their winnings, and you could potentially pay them to work a reduced schedule or something, especially if they like working there.

If I won the lottery I wouldn't stop working immediately, I'd give notice and could do some hand over.

Bus factor though - if a bus hits me I am immediately gone and people have to catch up without hand holding

The “lottery” framing is the normalized and gentle way of asking “What’s our plan for when Stripe / OpenAI offers them a $1M/yr Staff role but only if they start immediately?” Think about the great engineers you’ve met, and how many of them would say “Sorry, but no - my current team relies on me, and I should help them transition”.

I feel like a team that won't accept

> Sorry, but no - my current team relies on me, and I should help them transition

as a reason to allow a transition period is setting themselves up for failure. Isn't that the kind of engineer you want?

> only if they start immediately

Maybe this is a cultural thing, but here it's pretty well understood that people have notice periods built into their contracts. Absolutely no employer would be hiring any staff with any expectation that they be able to start the next day if that person is already employed.

In the US two weeks notice is the cultural norm, although there are horror stories about bad employers who don’t respect that all.

Probably the more relevant framing is “what if person just suddenly quits/takes leave?” Which has a whole host of valid reasons for happening.

Lottery framing is the gentle way of saying, what if they die.

But sure, go with the "other" lottery.

That's why we called it a Truck number.

It's just a nicer way of saying that they left without implying that they died.

Tbh the newspeak version of this is terrible. If someone immediately quits their job (presumably without transition so you can hire someone else) you have failed as a leader