Storytime: Once upon a time, I was a young grasshopper at a small consulting firm at which every employee was issued a Windows machine, our source control system was "\Customers" on C: drive, and our deployment strategy was "putty + copy-paste + hot-reload".

One morning, I heard something terrible while my boss's boss's machine was booting. Something akin to grinding. The thing was angry.

I gave boss^2 a heads-up that his hard drive might be failing, and that he might want to run a S.M.A.R.T. check on the poor thing. I also asked where the backup hard drives were, because I was brand-new and assumed that I just hadn't been issued one yet.

I checked the supply closet, found no hard drives, popped over to the office admin person, and recommended a deal I'd seen on some WD black drives before I realized that the place had gone quiet.

Everyone looked at me like I was from Mars.

Exactly 7 days later, boss^2's hard drive failed. We lost a week of work and had to zero out a 5 days x 3 employees worth of billable hours. We also ended up delivering late.

The client was pissed.

Based on the nasty looks that I got afterwards, it appeared that the standard assumption was that I had tampered with the drive to prove a point. (Um, nope).

I have since learned to ask prospective employers about their backup strategy.