I've seen some mess-ups in my life, but they started sticking out like a sore thumb long, long, long, long before anywhere close to $30 million was spent on it.

What does a $30 million dollar mess-up look like?

▲

rawgabbit 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Teams of consultants on site, some remote, and many offshore. Tons of documents are created and many environments and DevOps pipelines are stood up. First code release is when the people who push buttons touch the system for the first time. It is crap. Several more code releases attempt to make the system usable. Eventually another consultant or two are brought to evaluate the project and they say the project violated every best practice and common sense rule. Most egregiously the internal stakeholders who voiced serious concerns at the beginning of the project were dismissed or forced out etc.

	▲	9rx 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So much the same as what I've seen before, except instead of abandoning ship when the mess was clear and present, doubling down to see how far of a hole one can dig? Sunk cost must be one hell of a drug for the aforementioned CTO.

▲

nwallin 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am not OP and am not speaking for them.

"A $30 million mess-up" can look like (at least) two things. It can be $30 million was spent on a project that earned $0 revenue and was ultimately canceled, or it can look like $x was spent on a project to win a $30 million contract but a competitor won the contract instead.