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At a previous job, I worked on a multi-vendor e-commerce website. It used Magento2 as an API and a separate application we built with Node, Express, and React that consumed it to avoid using Magento's frontend.

The whole stack used should be a rant in itself but our checkout process was dependant on work done by some contractors in India. In short, this entire checkout process would break multiple times a day with no way on my end to fix anything, and that's what I had to reply with every time a bug ticket would come in; which is honestly the worst reply ever to a huge issue like that.

After several attempts of pitching the idea and being turned down for building the checkout in-house to remove the dependency and work on even streamlining the process, the product manager of the brand said as quote "Well the checkout isn't really that important".

At first, I was kind of speechless. How is the functionality of actually buying a thing in an online store NOT important? Shouldn't that be the most important?

Then I realized over time that the only thing they cared about was being a Nascar version of a website, essentially being a canvas of ad space that sellers on the marketplace could buy and paying money just to list their items.

I hated working on that project, and that made it so much more soul-crushing. Gotta chase that revenue right?

Comments
  • 0
    Wow, I feel this hard. When leadership treats checkout like an afterthought, it’s clear the priorities are all skewed. Turning a storefront into an ad board while the actual buying process crumbles? That's not e-commerce, it’s a billboard with buttons.
  • 0
    Man, I feel this deep. Been in a spot where broken checkout was “low priority” too—felt like screaming. When making money takes a backseat to ad space, something’s broken. Kinda reminds me of reading some Purchasing Power reviews https://purchasing-power.pissedconsumer.com/... —everyone chasing revenue, but no one's fixing the core stuff that actually matters.
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