The CEO built a custom password manager, somehow

“It's behind the VPN.”— Priya, The CEO

Reason:

Mainly because the deletion process requires a ticket, a manager and 5 approvals. Quietly rolled out to five countries.

Built by:

Priya, a field technician

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

an Electron app wrapping a website

Database:

a folder called DATABASE

Authentication:

permissions are checked by asking "should this person be here?"

Deployment:

deployed by emailing copy of copy of Customers_FIXED_final.csv to Tobias

Responsible:

Katrin and Chen, who each think the other owns it

Documentation:

a README last updated 141 days ago

Security situation:

the refresh token never expires

Future disaster:

It will be presented at a conference as a success story.

Age: 7.7 years · originally expected to last 3 months · 6 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €198k per year, alive 31x longer than intended, older than the department using it.