Customer Support built a customer health dashboard where everyone is green

“We have a backup somewhere.”— Ravi, Customer Support

Reason:

Honestly? Because the demo environment contains real customer data. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Ravi, a team lead

Build time:

5 hours 6 minutes

Built with:

React, Vite and unreasonable confidence

Database:

Firestore because the prototype needed to ship by Friday

Authentication:

the secret is in .env.example

Deployment:

deployed 29 minutes before the builder went on holiday

Responsible:

Tobias, who has never seen the source code

Documentation:

Priya's memory

Security situation:

backups use the same password as production

Future disaster:

It will outlive two reorganisations.

Age: 6.9 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 5 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 74 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 121x longer than intended, €77k per year, older than the department using it.