2019 was a good year

EfrenThe company’s employer recently acquired a competitor. The competitor struggled for a number of years, and the acquisition was a last-ditch effort to preserve at least one some business (total closure was the only other option).

Now, “struggle for years” sounds pretty vague, but due to poor database design, we actually have a clear indication of exactly when the company gave up:

CASE YEAR(SomeDate)
    WHEN 2013 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2013)  
    WHEN 2014 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2014)  
    WHEN 2015 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2015)  
    WHEN 2016 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2016)  
    WHEN 2017 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2017)  
    WHEN 2018 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2018)  
    WHEN 2019 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019)  
    WHEN 2020 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019)  
    WHEN 2021 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019)
    WHEN 2022 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019) 
    WHEN 2023 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019)  
    WHEN 2024 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019)  
    WHEN 2025 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019)
    WHEN 2026 THEN  
        SUM(Estimate2019) 
END

Here we have the classic “add a new column for every unit of time” design anti-pattern. A fun, traditional piece that is hard to maintain. But here we see exactly when the maintenance stopped: sometime in late 2019 or 2020.

Now I’m speculating a bit, but I guess this is pretty clear evidence of how the pandemic may have affected some businesses. someone should have added a new column. Maybe they were fired or transferred. A maintenance task that seemed so affordable to the company a year ago has suddenly become unsustainable.

“Debts that cannot be paid will not be paid”, as the saying goes. This is technically a debt that could not be paid. So it wasn’t. And the result was a company that failed.