Today was supposed to be quick and easy
My manager gave me what looked like a basic frontend task - swap out one component for another in an old multi-platform app. They said it would take maybe an hour tops.
Here’s what actually happened:
- The project wouldn’t even start on my local setup
- Nobody could tell me which repository or branch was the right one to use
- All the security certificates needed to build the app had expired months ago
- While I was trying to generate new certificates, my boss kept asking why it wasn’t done yet
The funny part? The actual code modification was literally just a few lines. But I spent 8 hours dealing with broken tooling, missing documentation, and a completely messed up development environment.
This always happens with older projects. People look at a small visual change and assume it’s trivial. They don’t realize that half the battle is just getting the thing to run in the first place.
Lesson learned: Don’t let people downplay frontend complexity. The code itself might be simple, but the ecosystem around it can be a total disaster.
been there done that! the worst part isnt even the technicall stuff - its trying to explain to non-tech people why “just change this button” became an 8 hour ordeal. they look at you like your incompetent when really the whole setup is held together with digital duct tape
Your experience perfectly illustrates why proper estimation requires examining the entire development pipeline, not just the code changes. I encountered a similar situation where a supposedly simple text update took three days because the build system relied on deprecated Node packages that conflicted with newer security requirements. The frustrating part was explaining to stakeholders why something that appeared trivial on the surface required extensive infrastructure work. What helped me in subsequent projects was maintaining a checklist of environmental prerequisites before accepting any timeline estimates. This includes verifying build tools, dependencies, certificates, and access permissions. Now I always add buffer time for legacy projects specifically because technical debt in tooling is often invisible until you actually need to touch the code.
oh man this hits close to home! how did you end up handling the certificate mess? did you have to bug IT or figure it out yourself? i’m curious - was this one of those projects where the original devs left and took all the tribal knowledge with them?