Your Team Is One PTO Away from Missing the Quarter

Monday morning, one engineer was out on PTO and three separate workstreams were already blocked before lunch. Slack filled with "quick question" pings nobody else could answer, and standup turned into a scavenger hunt for missing context. By Wednesday, it was obvious we did not have a throughput problem ... we had built a system that stored critical knowledge in one person. Most leadership teams do not call this out when they see it. They call it excellence: "She is our strongest engineer," "He