What Happens When Your Dev Team Goes Dark (And How to Prevent It)

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Let me tell you about the threemonth silence. A client came to us last year after their previous agency just stopped responding. Emails went unanswered. Calls went to voicemail. Slack messages sat on delivered indefinitely.

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Their half-built platform was sitting on servers they didn't have access to, written in code they couldn't read by people who had vanished. This isn't rare, by the way. They went dark is the number one complaint I hear from founders who've been burnt by agencies.

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So, why does this happen? Sometimes it is malicious. The agency overpromised, got stuck, and hid instead of admitting failure. But more often, it's structural. The agency took on too many projects. Your smaller budget got deprioritized, and nobody wanted to have the awkward conversation. Here's how to protect yourself before signing. So, first, ask about their current workload.

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How many active projects, what percentage of their team would be on yours? Second, establish communication rhythms up front. Weekly updates aren't optional. Define what unresponsive means and what happens if they cross that line. Third, ensure you have access to everything from day one. code repositories, hosting accounts, documentation. If they disappear, you

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should be able to walk away with your work. Because the real nightmare isn't a failed project. It's a failed project you can't even recover from.