14 upvotes, 5 direct replies (showing 5)
View submission: Massive Failure on the Product
More Info:
Tech Stack:
The Problem:
When some users attempted to sign up with new information, the system flagged their credentials as duplicates and failed to save their data. This issue occurred because many of these users had previously made purchases as "non-users" (guests). Their purchase data, including unique identifiers (such as email addresses or other personal details), had been stored in an overlooked table in the database.
When these "new users" tried to register, the system recognized that their information was already present in the database, linked to their past guest purchases. As a result, it mistakenly identified their credentials as duplicates and rejected the registration attempts.
As a front-end developer, I conducted extensive unit tests and end-to-end tests covering a variety of flows. However, I could not have foreseen the existence of this table conflict on the backend. I’m not trying to place blame on anyone because, at the end of the day, we all go down in the boat together.
Comment by AGRYZEN at 27/01/2025 at 00:21 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
So the 19000+ new leads were just existing leads? As long as there was ample consent sounds like you can just extract the database
Comment by spar_x at 27/01/2025 at 00:20 UTC
27 upvotes, 2 direct replies
This does not add up. You wrote that they were expecting 20k new users from this event, and only ended up with 300 users. The problem you describe would not have affected 19700 / 20000 users. Furthermore, if you already had these users' details previously, then you're saying that this only prevented existing users from being registered.. so these were not really "new users" at all and you already have their contact information anyway. This is a problem that should have been caught once you went live and it seems like remedying that problem would have been as simple as wiping that existing table with old user's details. It does not really explain the catastrophe that you described in the original post.
Comment by styphon at 27/01/2025 at 00:28 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This is a basic mistake to make. There should have been tests from the backend guys, or the QA to catch this type of thing. As junior front-end, it's not your fault. This is a massive failure on the more senior members of your team.
I'd be looking for a new job. And as your client, I'd be looking for a different dev company.
Comment by Invisible_Wetface at 27/01/2025 at 18:27 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Your system had guest user functionality but not guest account linking ? I can't see how this could happen or not be caught until now.
Comment by jwmoz at 27/01/2025 at 19:07 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Tech stack is irrelevant really. This was a fault in business logic and testing. Also lack of ability to hot fix.