HR built a commission calculator with a rounding bug

“We'll clean it up after the audit.”— Managing Director

Reason:

Officially because the CEO found the one button that does not work. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Anja, a controller

Build time:

1 hours 39 minutes

Built with:

Google Apps Script

Database:

an API that returns CSV

Authentication:

the write-only account can also read

Deployment:

running from an image tagged latest

Responsible:

Daniel, who inherited it during a reorganisation

Documentation:

none whatsoever

Security situation:

the encryption key is in the source code

Future disaster:

It will acquire a workaround for the workaround.

Age: 1.2 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 74 days ago · original builder left 118 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 50% chance of becoming business critical, alive 20x longer than intended, the builder has left.