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*CTO in panic, as always, invites everyone to the war room*

CTO: We have a MAJOR problem where 0.0001% of our customers are not receiving SMS confirmations.

Me: Cool. But, 0.0001% is very less compared to the other problems we are solving.

CTO: You don't understand, this is critical issue that needs to be addressed immediately.

Me: But even those.0.0001% customers are receiving e-mail confirmations, so this is not even blocker as we have other channels working.

CTO: I am emotional at this point. You need to prioritise this now.

Me: Okay, do we know the root cause of this problem?

Engineering head: we have blacklisted those numbers in past as our system detected them abusing our platform.

Me: Cool. Let's whitelist them, nothing much to worry here.

CTO: Floyd, you need to understand that 0.0001% of the customers are not receiving the SMS and the solution you are proposing is incorrect.

Me: Okay, what do you suggest?

CTO: We stop sending the SMS to all the customers.

Everyone on the call: 😨

Comments
  • 53
    You can’t have a SMS delivery problem if you don’t send SMS
  • 18
    @Root this was his exact reasoning behind the decision.
  • 10
    Burn it. Burn it all! Right to the ground. If some users have a sub-optimal UX because of hardware and browser combo, what's the point of even having a product?just stop everything.
  • 2
    Lol what. So what will you actually do?
  • 25
    @hubiruchi my response was

    "Sure, let me prioritise this and get back to you with high level requirement doc (because he isn't a fan of analysis), and we can immediately start working on it".

    CTO: that's the spirit. I really admire your zeal Floyd.

    I take my brownie point, exit the conversation, and forget about it. Because he'll come up with something new and he himself will forget about this issue.

    And as predicted, haven't heard from him or his team on the issue.
  • 11
    Wow, so you can just get rid of a whole component (SMS notification) without any begging. Nice, axe it immediately!
  • 6
    0.0001% of users have a problem?
    one in a 100k new users?

    How the duq did he even find out about this?
  • 9
    @magicMirror Maybe it didn't work for the CEO himself?
  • 2
    This needs a follow up because this makes no sense at all.
  • 4
    He did you a favor - once less thing to manage.
  • 5
    Jimmy, stop sniffing coke on the toilet before the meeting...
  • 3
    Oh that’s my favorite solution - just turn it off and retire the feature/system. The only perfect system is one that does not exist. Kill the SMS feature and bask in the blissful perfection of nothingness.
  • 1
    Thank god I'm a CTC and not a CTO... otherwise I'd be forced to make asshat decisions like this one.
  • 1
    @fullstackclown

    That's not a decision.

    That's a "I've made a mistake and I'm wrong and I'm caught red handed ... But to protect my ego and my status as the dictator of this project, let's just force them to bend to my will to show them who's boss" dickmove
  • 4
    Sms is outdated and terrible! We need to start tying confirmation codes to pigeons and flying them to clients. That's how we really innovate.
  • 6
    @VoidNull

    How about we built a hamster cannon....
  • 3
  • 2
    Wow, those people must have a lot of influence
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