Finance built a company-wide announcement tool

“We can rebuild it properly later.”— Tobias, Finance

Reason:

Officially because the last person who understood it left 14 months ago. With 2 users, one of whom is the CEO.

Built by:

Tobias, a product owner

Build time:

a long Thursday

Built with:

Google Apps Script

Database:

a Postgres database called app_db-2

Authentication:

an API key in the frontend bundle

Deployment:

in a Docker container nobody can rebuild

Responsible:

"the team", which is Tobias

Documentation:

a Loom video nobody can find

Security situation:

it is indexed by Google. All of it.

Future disaster:

It will turn out to be the only system that knows the real numbers.

Age: 262 days · originally expected to last 7 days · 2 owners so far · last meaningful change 262 days ago · original builder left 218 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 74% chance of becoming business critical, 87 users, alive 37x longer than intended.