Engineering built an AI chatbot trained on the employee handbook

“Microsoft probably handles that.”— Sofia, Engineering

Reason:

Mainly because the approval chain includes 7 people and one shared mailbox. With 2 users, one of whom is the CEO.

Built by:

Sofia, a key account manager

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

a Rails app from 2016 nobody updated

Database:

a Google Sheet with an Apps Script nobody remembers writing

Authentication:

a URL 55 characters long, which counts as security

Deployment:

hosted on a server shared with 7 unrelated applications

Responsible:

Finance Business Partner, who delegated it to somebody who left

Documentation:

comments that say "do not change this"

Security situation:

authorization happens entirely in the frontend

Future disaster:

It will cause Security to ask "what application?".

Age: 314 days · originally expected to last 14 days · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 3 days ago · original builder left 156 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €57k per year, alive 22x longer than intended, the builder has left.