Customer Support built an email campaign sender bypassing marketing

“We'll add authentication later.”— Lukas, Customer Support

Reason:

Officially because the backlog contains 205,809 items and one priority. Presented in a town hall as "innovation".

Built by:

Lukas, the management assistant

Build time:

5 hours 29 minutes

Built with:

Google Apps Script

Database:

a MySQL database called test on a machine under a desk

Authentication:

JWT validation checks that the token looks like a JWT

Deployment:

running with 83% memory usage and "seems fine"

Responsible:

Finance, according to IT

Documentation:

a folder called OLD_DO_NOT_USE containing the current documentation

Security situation:

the service account is also a real employee

Future disaster:

It will export test data into production.

Age: 6.4 years · originally expected to last 7 days · 6 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 420 days ago

Rated rare mostly because: 170 users, alive 336x longer than intended, 4 departments depend on it.