IT (yes, really) built a performance review form

“It's basically an internal tool.”— Elena, IT (yes, really)

Reason:

Officially because the workflow has 114 steps and nobody wants to open it. With a settings page that does nothing.

Built by:

Elena, a controller

Build time:

7 evenings

Built with:

Claude, and no one quite sure what it changed

Database:

a mini PC behind the reception desk

Authentication:

TLS is enabled, certificate warnings are ignored

Deployment:

running from a zip file called Leads_new2.csv

Responsible:

Olivier, who only knows the frontend

Documentation:

a calendar invite description from June

Security situation:

production secrets are in a Slack message

Future disaster:

It will stop working when Bastian's credit card expires.

Age: 2.6 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 4 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 420 days ago

Rated common mostly because: alive 138x longer than intended, 22 users, 1 departments depend on it.