Kept trying to schedule knowledge transfer as I approached my final day, I had designed and developed a complex technical ecosystem supporting 3-5 major clients with pretty mammoth database operations and 20+ data ingestion/analytical pipelines. I also supervised the team for 3 years, and for the past year had been pressing to hire an experienced DBA or SQL developer but had been repeatedly shot down, being given an additional application tech instead (button pusher, data entry).

Finally, the day before my last day, I got to run through the entire architecture overview and a deep-dive with upper management and the two technicians remaining on the team. Everyone sat in stunned silence for the majority of it, and at the end of this management says ‘we didn’t realize that this was so complex. Who do you think could take over administration and upkeep of these systems?’ I recommended again that they hire a DBA as quickly as possible, but told them I’d be willing to consult for 2-3 months for an appropriate rate.

Only heard from them a couple times so I guess I did a pretty good job on outlining the system, but they lost the largest of those clients within a few months. I suspect that they let pride kill that contract.