Maybe this is naive, but I feel if an application/feature is strategically important to a company, at least two developers should always be assigned to support it routinely. This great resignation is no joke, and I’m getting tired of being the last man standing here. I’m too old for this shit.

Don't overwork yourself, mate.
Although there are probably serious reasons why other devs abandoned ship.

@HitWRight very good points, and thanks!

Was at a company once where two devs did look after some crucial system. By pure coincidence they both handed in their notice on the same morning, so we were still screwed.

@TrevorTheRat oh no, that’s wild!

@fiftyhz amazingly they weren’t going to the same place. One had had enough of a long commute and the other had more opportunities. It was pure coincidence that they both did it the same morning.

The same company, probably a few years later, had another incident where a project had gone badly wrong in the Java team and the team leader (who was a really nice guy) got blamed for it and left. But the project manager, who was a big reason for the failure and a real A-hole, was promoted to a senior management position (head of dev I think).

Not long afterwards every dev on that team, except one, lined up outside this guys office and handed their notice in. Most of them went to that team leaders new company a few miles away.

They were even more screwed then because that left only one guy who even knew that programming language (Java).
My team (the VB team back in those days) just sat back and watched the show.
I’ve never seen such inspiring solidarity

@TrevorTheRat that is truly an amazing story. Sounds like a real sh*I show.

@fiftyhz It was at the time.
But that place is still going strong and is a pretty good employer in my area to be honest. It was just that one team that was bad at the time.

@TrevorTheRat you should make this a proper rant