# IT Darwin Awards

> 8 ideas that are frankly ridiculous and yet so widespread when it comes to software development… Do yourself a favor: read this!

- Author: Mathieu Eveillard
- Published: 2024-05-15
- Updated: 2025-11-18
- Tags: Organization
- Canonical: https://www.mathieueveillard.com/articles/it-darwin-awards/
- Translation (fr): https://www.mathieueveillard.com/fr/articles/it-darwin-awards.md

![IT Darwin Awards](https://www.mathieueveillard.com/articles/2024-05-15-it-darwin-awards/it-darwin-awards.webp)

A collection of the best dumb\*\*\* ideas in IT.

## Deploying the PoC to production

Alright, let’s start with something easy and uncontroversial—hopefully, anyway. “So what? It works, so that’s good enough: let’s roll out the PoC to production! Ugh, these IT guys, always saying they need more time to do things right. Quality, quality, that’s all they ever talk about; they’re obsessed with quality. Me, I’m pragmatic: you have to be pragmatic to make money.” Okay, so let’s take a deep breath and explain it again: /articles/poc-vs-mvp.

## The complete rewrite, tunnel vision included

Well, that’s a classic. We approve a budget, we create a “v2” branch, and off we go, all guns blazing. It’ll take three months. Then we wait, and it’s going to be released, very soon, any day now, really, very soon indeed. And then we wait. Then we scramble to catch up, to implement the new features on the v2 branch. And then, inevitably, a change in priorities happens. The 18 months of work end up stagnating on their branch, but not in production, and all that great work dies without ever seeing a single user. /articles/strangler-fig-pattern

## The in-house framework

Well, first of all, when I hear the word _framework_, I reach for my revolver. But a custom-built framework takes it to the next level: it’s almost fascinating. It’s “Informatik 2000,” a company with 190 employees, which assigns two developers to create what will ultimately become a bottleneck for all its projects, and, at the same time, an endless source of bugs, missing features, security vulnerabilities, and lagging version upgrades. Look at what’s out there on the market? Nah, we can do better. /articles/framework-maison

## Computer Masturbation

Ah, I particularly love this one: creating a big, fat IT department with IT folks who talk about IT and get annoyed at “the business side” that doesn’t understand a thing and puts pressure on them. Calling it a “cost center” and then optimizing the whole mess… by cutting costs. The beauty of support functions and a bestseller among CAC 40 companies, a must-read for every CEO to immediately discourage the last remaining employees driven by good will. /articles/dsi

## The famous DevOps team

This one is more subtle. It starts with good intentions, but in the end, we’re still shooting ourselves in the foot. The DevOps approach is the idea that Devs have Ops skills so they can be self-sufficient in managing deployment operations, and also to hold them accountable. If we pull all these people out of their teams and put them together, well, that’s back to square one, isn’t it? Oh yeah, there’s also the softer version: “Lucas, _the_ DevOps guy on the team,” but don’t try to fool me: it’s pretty much the same thing. /articles/devops

## Technical debt, a programmer’s thing

Hmmm, not really, no. There’s no topic more business-critical than technical debt. Reality will catch up with a CEO who isn’t interested in it as quickly as with a runner tackling a marathon at 20 km/h. In fact, if you ever plan to buy a software company, you’d be well advised to commission a code audit, because software that works at a given moment isn’t enough. And if you think there’ll be less technical debt with no-code, ha ha, sorry: don’t make me laugh. /articles/dette-technique.

## IT for IT’s sake

The root of all evil in IT 😈 I’ll always be amazed by developers’ fascination with anything new, powerful, and complex. What are we talking about? The N+1th JavaScript framework, a linear combination of the first N, which we’ll rush to use in production. The latest trendy, hyper-scalable architecture, a real game changer at Big Tech, that has nothing to do with our topic but that we’ll use anyway. Meanwhile, the user can go jump in a lake. /articles/hype-technologique

## Book a train ticket on SNCF Connect

Yes, that’s a cheap shot, but it feels good! I actually thought this was a French specialty until recently, when I tried to book a ticket on the Renfe website. Let’s stay positive: it’s good; I didn’t feel out of place. That must be what “railway Europe” is all about. /articles/sncf-connect