I have been working for this small business for little over 2 years now. We had only 5 employees, two left last year and another one gave 2 weeks notice. She was a senior-level employee (over 15 years experience) and out of the blue submitted her resignation. All are shocked since we don't have a back up/replacement for her yet and no one clearly is trained/experienced enough to do her job. In short the company's existence is at stake.
There is this one other employee who was around for 18+ years, but very minimal competency in doing his role, and hence, though he is the most senior employee, he doesn't have a clue how to handle the clients moving forward. He is in his early 70's but plans on staying in for few more years for whatever reason. He is a very easy going, laid back individual and hence didn't really cared about anything that was outside his job responsibility compared to the leaving employee who used to go above and beyond to get the job done accomplishing tasks clearly outside her role.
So that makes her irreplaceable and now we are all in a panic state. Especially the senior guy, since she used to be his go-to person anytime he had issues with work. Now that he clearly understands that his (big momma) is gone and won't be there to help him out on his daily work stuff he started approaching me with his questions (I should be the one asking him questions being new guy and not the other way around, but every time I did he routed me onto her as he didn't knew the answer).
We had a discussion the other day about hiring a replacement and he expects me to train the new person. I am a programmer and the new hire is a Business Analyst role. I don't have a solid understanding about our business domain to train someone new with my limited time with the firm and also being a programmer and not a BA. I never had a knowledge transfer or official training when I started at this place as the previous programmer left 4 months before I joined.
But this senior guy is avoiding taking responsibility (as always) and expects me to train the new person as he clearly doesn't have a clue about the process.
Long story short, I will be looking for other jobs and leaving soon.
My question is :
Should I let the company owner (resides out of state, acquired this firm several years back and doesn't have a clear understanding about our product) know how incompetent this senior guy is and warn them that the company is at stake if they don't find a strong replacement ASAP (probably try to rehire some of ex employees at least on a consulting basis or something?) Or just keep my mouth shut and make a silent exit like the BA did since I know it doesn't buy me anything?
The senior employee expects me to give him more than 2 weeks notice if I ever choose to leave the company. He thinks the previous employee (whom I replaced) should be ashamed of himself for leaving on a 2 weeks notice (isn't it the industry standard though not in favor of small businesses like ours? Even the BA(who is leaving) whom he considered his trustworthy coworker/friend for a long time is doing the same. So why should I be any different?
Please advise.
The senior employee expects me to give him more than 2 weeks notice if I ever choose to leave the company. He thinks the previous employee (whom I replaced) should be ashamed of himself for leaving on a 2 weeks notice
" - what do your contracts say? I have been given one weeks notice a few times when the company lost a project. I doubt that your company would be any different - even to the old guy