Field Service built a quote builder with a discount field and no limit

“IT would have taken months.”— Tobias, Field Service

Reason:

Mainly because the spreadsheet has 144,098 rows and 16 tabs. Quietly rolled out to two countries.

Built by:

Tobias, a warehouse supervisor

Build time:

9 evenings

Built with:

Airtable plus four Zapier zaps

Database:

Supabase on a free tier that pauses in 11 days

Authentication:

the password is the company name plus 2019

Deployment:

last deployed 141 days ago

Responsible:

Sarah, currently on parental leave

Documentation:

a diagram on a whiteboard, photographed, then deleted

Security situation:

the penetration test found it by accident

Future disaster:

It will make an audit take 6 extra weeks.

Age: 6.3 years · originally expected to last 4 weeks · 3 owners so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 3 days ago · original builder left 861 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €94k per year, alive 76x longer than intended, the builder has left.