[ajanuary]

> Pro tip: use "win the lottery" instead to avoid the negative connotation of injury or death.

I very much appreciate the attempt to reframe it positively. But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover. The key thing with “hit by a bus” is, no matter what your personality, you don’t have any time to prepare. Thats why you’ve got to get the information out there today. Unfortunately I’ve yet to find a positive spin that has those same connotations.

[DanHulton]

"Doing a handover" won't save a lot of companies. There's no level of "handover" that will save some of the shops I've been in, that just 100% rely on one team member to handle _everything._ Even if they took a _month_ to try to pass along along their accumulated knowledge, there's ingrained engineering practices and processes that all boil down to "Go ask Chris."

Honestly, I'd say that if you're able to do a handover in two weeks, and that covers everything it needs to cover? Well, then probably the handover isn't _actually_ necessary, and anything you cover in those two weeks could probably be figured out by a reasonably competent teammate. Knowledge is rarely the issue, being a person-shaped load-bearing component for your team _is._

(But also, good on you for taking a bit of time to make sure your old co-workers aren't left in the lurch. It probably also gives a bit of time to consider what you _really_ want to do with the winnings, so as not to blow it all in the first year like a lot of lottery winners do.)

[chipdart]

> "Doing a handover" won't save a lot of companies. There's no level of "handover" that will save some of the shops I've been in, that just 100% rely on one team member to handle _everything._ Even if they took a _month_ to try to pass along along their accumulated knowledge, there's ingrained engineering practices and processes that all boil down to "Go ask Chris."

That might very well be true, but to a manager having a handover means the problem of loss of institutional knowledge is solved, and any subsequent problem due to lack of context or loss of institutional knowledge is avoidable and caused by poor handovers.

[devsda]

Depends on the other person, but "gets hit by a bus or abducted by aliens" or some other (movie) trope doesn't sound too bad if it's an informal discussion.

[serial_dev]

I dislike the "hit by the bus" not because it hypothetically kills a team mate, but because it implies that if one of us dies, the key worry of the management is who left who knows how to deploy the foo-banana service. This phrase is a reminder that nobody would care if you died apart from the fact that only you know how to do x and y.

"Abducted by an alien" is so absurd, it takes away all that and replaces it with something potentially fun and an experience of a lifetime.

I also very much prefer the lottery example, and the fact that someone on HN would still do a handover doesn't change that fact.

[RadiozRadioz]

I don't like "win the lottery" because it implies that the sole reason for the person staying is money; it devalues their loyalty to the team.

Everyone's working for money in reality of course, but to me it doesn't feel team-spirited to call it out.

[cryptonector]

"Key person risk" captures all the possibilities.

[coldtea]

>But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover.

How much time are you devoting to it? Enough for the project to ship, which could take months or a year, or merely enough to hastily give some other devs a breakdown of the thing, and "so long suckers" / hope for the best?

And, while you might (still do a handover), would others?

[euroderf]

Good documentation will commit as much as possible to paper: to turn the implicit into the explicit. But then ya gotta keep it up to date.

[arendtio]

> But personally, if I win the lottery, I’m still doing a handover.

I wonder why we talk about such rare events. People get sick, and burnout is very common, too. Some people look for a new job, and when they find it, they call in sick just to not have to handle all the stress of their old job.

There are plenty of more likely examples of not having a handover.

[ijidak]

- Kidnapped to paradise

- Abducted by beautiful aliens

[crabmusket]

"Taken by the Rapture"?