I Got Fired After Giving Feedback About a System That Was Already in Production (opens in new tab)

The system was in production. It worked. And it was built without version control, using Perl scripts, ad-hoc PHP files, PostgreSQL stored procedures, and JasperReports. From a modern engineering perspective, it looked like a disaster. And yet — it had been running for years. Even more surprising: the main developer was also one of the CEOs. One day, he asked for my opinion about the architecture. So I prepared carefully. I spent a weekend documenting everything: maintainability issues lack o...