All Terrain Thinking

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Never show a salesman unfinished software

By Anonymous, June 13, 2006

When beta software deletes your client list

Never show a salesperson unfinished software. He might just put it into production

A few years back I landed an intriguing contract gig. A centerfold model whose name you might recognize decided to start her own site. She hired a staff and was doing fairly well, until the site was attacked on a right-wing talk radio show. Suddenly, business exploded. Thousands of people from all over the world wanted to sign up, totally overwhelming the online sign-up software her site was using.

She hired phone staffers to handle the deluge, but prospective customers were uncomfortable talking to live people; they wanted a nice, impersonal, online form. And that’s where I came in. A friend of mine who worked at her ISP recommended hiring me to create an automated Internet account sign-up tool that would verify ID (and age), negotiate a thicket of international financial regulations, and stand up under the deluge of prospective customers.

Our star was quite nice, actually, and she even knew something about computers. Eventually she ended up hiring a small team of developers to work with me. We were under a lot of pressure, though; there was plenty of business out there, and our boss didn’t want to lose any of it.

We were having a few problems with the client side of the app, and the sales department was getting uptight about the delay. Then, one day, one of the salespeople asked if I would let him take a look at the latest version. It was reasonably functional, thanks to a shrewd guess I’d made at what we expected the client-side code to look like, so I sent it along.

A week passed. Then (late on a Friday night, of course) I received a call from the sales director, screaming at me about several thousand users whose accounts had suddenly disappeared. The little old lady who worked the help desk somewhere overseas was totally swamped. Who was responsible?

It didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. I called back the director. “That’s my code,” I declared, “and you’re absolutely right: It’s removing those accounts.”

After another bout of yelling, I was ordered to explain. “Well,” I said, “those accounts were all created by the beta version of the software, which is designed to delete all accounts after 24 hours. It’s intended only for testing the registration process. I don’t know who put that code online, but it was never supposed to be used by actual customers!”

Ultimately, this resulted in three developments: one, the beta software was pulled from the site; two, I hacked some code into our production product to accept a specific series of beta serial numbers; and three, the salesperson who took it upon himself to upload my beta evaluation copy for customer use was promoted to a cushy management spot. After all, aside from a few vanishing client accounts, the beta was “sort of working.” Sheesh!

Two weeks later we had the final version of our new software running like a champ, and our boss rewarded us with a champagne celebration. Not long afterward, her site was gobbled up by a larger “adult” company that was, in its turn, taken over by a huge entertainment conglomerate. Most of the engineers were let go, so hardly anyone remains who can appreciate the dedication of a salesperson who rose to a challenge, crippled a product, and was richly rewarded.

There’s no business like show business.

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