The New Guy built a customer portal

“The password is really long.”— Elena, The New Guy

Reason:

Allegedly because the CEO found the one button that does not work. With 2 users, one of whom is the CEO.

Built by:

Elena, an intern

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

Express, because NestJS looked like too much work

Database:

DynamoDB with one item containing everything

Authentication:

the service account has global admin, just in case

Deployment:

running in a region 9 time zones away from its users

Responsible:

the business

Documentation:

a Notion page titled "New docs"

Security situation:

production secrets are in a Jira ticket

Future disaster:

It will become part of the company's "digital core" slide deck.

Age: 6.5 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 1 owner so far · survived 3 reorganisations · last meaningful change 210 days ago

Rated common mostly because: 4 departments depend on it, alive 112x longer than intended, €68k per year.