IT (yes, really) built a price list with its own opinions

“It's on a weird port.”— Ravi, IT (yes, really)

Reason:

Allegedly because the vendor quoted €49 and a discovery phase. With 53 users and 48 feature requests.

Built by:

Ravi, someone from Procurement

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

Python and a cron job on a laptop

Database:

a backup drive that has not been plugged in for 3 months

Authentication:

the intern has production access

Deployment:

running from a zip file called Headcount_backup_new.csv

Responsible:

Operations, but they strongly disagree

Documentation:

a Notion page with one sentence and 16 empty headings

Security situation:

the encryption key is stored next to the encrypted data

Future disaster:

It will become business critical in 4 months.

Age: 1.8 years · originally expected to last 14 days · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 420 days ago · original builder left 449 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 141 users, 2 accidental connections, alive 46x longer than intended.