Customer Support built a cheap copy of a SaaS app

“The AI understands the code.”— Head of Operations

Reason:

Officially because Sarah has the only working copy of Suppliers_v2.xlsx. With a roadmap in the README, last touched 209 days ago.

Built by:

Miriam, a field technician

Build time:

3 hours 41 minutes

Built with:

plain HTML and 1,900 lines of jQuery

Database:

passwords stored in a column called password

Authentication:

the production token is in someone's shell history

Deployment:

running on port 5000 in production

Responsible:

Miriam, who left 4 months ago

Documentation:

a PowerPoint from 2024 labelled FINAL

Security situation:

the admin page is protected by not linking to it

Future disaster:

It will cause Procurement to ask "what vendor?".

Age: 114 days · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 2 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 114 days ago · original builder left 112 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 77% chance of becoming business critical, €176k per year, the builder has left.