Internal Communications built a headcount planning app

“It's just a webhook.”— Plant Manager

Reason:

Officially because the workflow has 35 steps and nobody wants to open it. Copied to production via floppy disks.

Built by:

Daniel, a product owner

Build time:

12 minutes

Built with:

a REST API generated by something nobody can regenerate

Database:

a vector database because somebody said RAG

Authentication:

CSRF protection was disabled during debugging

Deployment:

sharing a reverse proxy with the company Christmas raffle

Responsible:

Thomas, who insists they are not the owner

Documentation:

a Notion page titled "New docs"

Security situation:

the admin account is also the service account

Future disaster:

It will stop working after someone renames a column.

Age: 1.6 years · originally expected to last 2 months · 1 owner so far · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 79% chance of becoming business critical, alive 9x longer than intended, 1 departments depend on it.