[syrgian]

Same experience. I know one example of "oh yeah, he had been here since the creation of the company but he became a drag and his departure was welcome" for each 10 examples of "development speed, reliability and talent retention dropped after this person left".

And it doesn't happen just with software development, both as individual customer and employee I have cut ties with companies of all kinds after they lost their most valuable employee and the replacements would need years(if ever) to provide equivalent service. Probably most people have done this after service greatly degraded without being able to pinpoint it to an specific employee (e.g. the cook in a restaurant).