Share Your Website Launch PTSD Stories!
I have been avoiding mentioning the current website debacle going on with our government's healthcare project because as you probably know, I do not like discussing politics, like at all .
But, let me tell you something– I feel for the people who built that website, because I guarantee you that at some point, they said "this site is not going to work, it will not sustain the traffic, it will crash and be a terrible user experience," and someone who supervised them was all "it's fine, just launch it."
I do not know one person who has ever worked in website development who hasn't had this exact same experience, where the client just WILL NOT LISTEN, and then things like this happen.
Here are some examples, just from myself and some website-maker friends. Remember, the larger the client, the more levels of bureaucracy, the more things that can go ridiculously, absurdly wrong.
Here are a few gems for you:
— In the nineties, I worked for a big famous website consultancy. We made a website for an encyclopedia maker, and they decided they wanted to give away encyclopedias at the last minute. We were like "your site cannot handle that much traffic, it will break," and they were all "do it anyway," and we did, and it did, and that happened.
Here are some awesome quotes from the Facebook discussion where this was being discussed. Feel free to add your own in the comments!
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I am remembering one project of mine where the lead developer went missing for several days, only to call me from a payphone outside an Ashram in Denver saying he wasn't coming back.
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Seriously. You know there was one guy out there saying, "What's the worst that can happen?" There's always that guy.
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It's giving me flashback nightmares to the time <famous retailer>'s store locator/in-store pick up locator crashed right after Thanksgiving, and I had to be on a plane up to their headquarters to get yelled at for 4 hours. I'm pretty sure it was worse than testifying before a Congressional sub-committee.
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Ted Cruz was all like, "Putting up a web site that sells things is not that hard." And I was all like, "I just spent the past year of my life working on one of those and it's still not launched. I'd like to see you try it, nuts face."