Anybody who can too totally identify / has gone through similar physical and mental breakdowns like the core programmer in Netflix's "The billion dollar code" while realizing that the given code problem will not be solved on time in combination with huge financial pressure?

I haven’t watched it.

However, a former boss desperately wanted/needed me to finish a dynamic, per-merchant risk assessment and management engine for an online gift card company. He gave me a week, and kept fighting hard on the deadline because it was for investors and compliance. I eventually talked him into a month, and delivered an ugly but functional (and extensible) system.

A full risk engine takes six months, and yet he couldn’t understand why it took more than a few days. 🤦🏻‍♀️

@Root that sounds like a ridiculously challenging project, I’ll be damned if I could get it done in a month. Then again it might be easier than I think, I have no idea what it even is

I don't get any content out of your comment. Sorry...

@TeachMeCode It sits between the user and purchasing, and blocks any purchases that appear fraudulent. It can’t be too strict or the company loses legitimate sales, and it can’t be too lenient or the company loses money because of chargebacks. (Such as someone using a stolen card, the real owner finding out, and reversing the charges.) Too far in either direction and the company also loses clients and reputation. But the fraud rules that make sense for low-value merchants (icecream) don’t make sense for high-value merchants (electronics, jewelry) so there’s default rules, per-merchant rules (that they or the company could change), and a lot of research and nuance (purchase timing, card number reuse, names, billing address, email addresses, purchase amounts and counts, …), and then testing all of it, validating against real data, plus fraudulent users actively trying to determine what the rules are and outsmart them. Any bugs in the system cost the company sales (and customers). And of course only I was responsible for all of this. :)

There’s also third party tools like IDology that can help, but they’re a bitch to support and integrate, and they’re async, so I needed to build support that flow too even if I didn’t implement those tools right away.

It was absolutely a nightmare.
And taken completely for granted.