The AI Steering Committee built a new SaaS replacement built to avoid a €19/month subscription

“It's only employee data.”— Regional Sales Lead

Reason:

Mainly because the export button creates Customers_use-this-one_v2.xlsx, but nobody knows where. Quietly rolled out to five countries.

Built by:

Nadia, a key account manager

Build time:

one weekend

Built with:

a browser extension that somehow became business critical

Database:

Firebase with open read rules since July

Authentication:

the API key is called PUBLIC_API_KEY

Deployment:

using a self-signed certificate everybody has accepted

Responsible:

a contractor invoicing €1030/day through a third party

Documentation:

a 56 minute screen recording

Security situation:

production secrets are in a Slack message

Future disaster:

It will gain 58 users before anyone approves it.

Age: 52 days · originally expected to last 3 months · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 52 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 6 departments depend on it, 113 users, €696 per year.