I worked at Hollywood Video when it wax trying to compete with Blockbuster. But the founders, literally two college bros who started a video store, refused to spend on IT. Their point of sale was DOS-based and the prices were stored in code. 1/

Prices weren’t in database. But in the actual code. The POS systems were so hardware constrained that changes could could be made only if other features were removed.

They were smothered in technical debt.

They, after throwing way too much money into http://Reel.com , decided late to rewrote from scratch their POS. Instead of deploying a vendor solution.

Even though I worked on that project, it was not a good strategic decision.

The owners really just wanted to cash out.

Connections to stores were via old satellite connections. Blockbuster had T1 lines to most of their stores.

And since prices and promotions were in the code, it could take days or weeks to change prices.

Or to add a competing sale.

It was so deep in Tecnical debt, it could not be agile. Hell, it couldn’t be anything except their unique culture.

There is a reason they aren’t mentioned at all in this doc.

Management was only focused on beating Blockbuster. But they should have been focused on Netflix.

The founders were infamous for saying that they should just fire all of IT and hire “two guys and a pizza”. They had no idea that their distain for IT was the end of their company.

Netflix knew that data and tech was their market advantage.

I don’t normally talk about clients. But considering that they aren’t just gone, but the whole industry is, I think there is more professional value in sharing this story of technical debt.