[onion2k]

them leaving put millions of dollars of revenue at risk

Every team should fight against this. Writing simple, understandable, documented code that doesn't need some key person to maintain it is a very good thing. For a start, failing to do that locks people in to their job. Not being able to move on, and up, is a very bad thing. Secondly, people leave for reasons other than money. What if someone's husband gets a cool job in another state and they move for that? No amount of money would keep them, so you still lose those millions. Thirdly, there's the bus factor - what if that person is run over by a bus? How do you keep going?

Paying someone more and more to keep them is only patching the underlying problem that your team isn't resilient enough to catastrophic change. Fix that problem.

[refurb]

I’d question how good your people are if the best of them leaving wouldn’t impact your revenue. It sounds like an assembly line punching widgets, so maybe the work is neither urgent nor requiring dynamic thinking and responding quickly to changing market conditions? In that case I could see it not mattering if someone leaves.

My experience is on teams of 2-3 working towards a product launch that has to happen in 6 months and sure we can always replace someone if they die. The cost of that if not in revenue, but team efficiency, sacrifice of other work, is way more than a few tens of thousands per year.

And of course, everyone is replaceable. But replacing them may cost more than just paying them more, even if it keeps them around for another 6 months.