Real Magic: Disappearing, Being Replaceable, and the Circus Factor
There’s a kind of a myth in software teams: If you’re irreplaceable, you’re secure.
If you’re the only one who knows the system, the only one who can untangle the spaghetti code, the one who always gets pinged at 11 PM — then you’re safe. You’re valuable. But that’s not value. That’s a liability.
In truth, the most valuable people are often the most replaceable — because they’ve done the work to make themselves so.
They document. They comment. They teach.
They write code that explains itself and leave behind artifacts that lower the learning curve.
They reduce what we call the circus factor1 (or more grimly the bus factor).
“What if Alice leaves and joins the circus?
Who can implement this hotfix?
Who even knows how the system works?
What does the “omega-control-subsystem” even do?”
If the answer is “no one,” then Alice isn’t a hero — they’re a risk.
So we do the unglamorous work.
We write down what we know.
We simplify.
We onboard.
We step aside, just briefly, to prove the system still runs.
And in doing so, we unlock something far more useful than circus-proofing: freedom.
You can leave the critical path and take on the work that’s harder, messier, and more ambiguous.
You can go build something new without worrying.
You can take a vacation without guilt.
You can join the circus if you really want to — and if you’ve done your job well, no one will panic.
This is the real magic.
“Real magic can never be made by offering someone else’s liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.”
— The Unicorn, The Last Unicorn
It takes effort. It costs something. It means letting go of ego and control, and being “the only one.”
But that’s how you build teams that last.
That’s how you build systems that live longer than you.
That’s how you move forward.
And if one day someone says, “They could’ve stayed, but they left us better than they found us,” that might just be the highest compliment you can get.
So there’s my immortality, eh?
Fin.