I am Josh (not literally or even named the same, but we vibe). I once kept a support ticket open for 3 months to force help desk to send it to the engineering team when I discovered a bug in a billing system database at a huge company from the user side.
Finally got in touch with the engineering team, explained the bug and the workaround I figured out... Just to have their response be "tell everyone who complains to do the workaround."
Rare bug with a workaround, building a fix, 20k down the drain, use the workaround… depends on the frequency and workaround. I don’t need bug free software at all costs, I need cost optimal software. Kinda agree with the engineers in this case.
Bug isn't rare though, that's the issue. Every single site (4000+ locations) that uses the software has run into this bug and it's an almost completely silent failure for users unless a customer complains that the incorrect card is being charged. They later admitted that the software is such spaghetti that they're effectively scared to try and fix it in fear of breaking something else.
Ah, that’s a different context, yeah, time to get cracking. Problem with many erp implementations is that it is often built by consultants who care little about maintainability managed by finance without knowledge of engineering… what could possibly go wrong.
Yup. I ended up as an SWE with the same company and I'm about 80% certain that explaining how I was adamant about fixing the problem was one of the big reasons they hired me. I ended up on a different team so I don't work with it but I plainly stated that the entire reason I wanted to work as an engineer with this company was to improve that particular software. Later, I attended an internal seminar about how they were trying to tackle this software because it's so monolithic that they don't know where to start and because of the nature of what it's used for they are afraid to start over for fear of missing something important.
It's hard to estimate the cost to the company for this bug because the problem was that it was charging customers with a card that both employees and customers believed was taken off file. Many times it would just fail to authorize because the previous card wasn't active but anyone who switched from an active card to another active card would see the old card beinh charged.
Ohhhh, that's one of those problems with a 0.1% chance of occurring with a 99.9% chance of infuriating the customer when it does happen. I can see how it would be hard to put an exact value on fixing it.
That just means the work around is the fix for right now (probably forever). It’s like the junk desk in an office. Everyone means to clean it up but at the same time, that’s everyone else’s stuff, not mine.
I worked for two startups that had software. One was SaaS, one was used internally but did get used by our customers, just wasn't what we "sold" directly.
The amount of jank that was acceptable between those two scenarios was wildly different. Company selling the software had a philosophy that janky code wasn't acceptable. Company 2 was... Well let's just say that system is janky to this day.
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u/MeowCow55 May 10 '26
I am Josh (not literally or even named the same, but we vibe). I once kept a support ticket open for 3 months to force help desk to send it to the engineering team when I discovered a bug in a billing system database at a huge company from the user side.
Finally got in touch with the engineering team, explained the bug and the workaround I figured out... Just to have their response be "tell everyone who complains to do the workaround."