In my first day on the job, I was tasked with synchronizing our python application’s user accounts into our support software via their API. Easy enough, I thought.

Like a disciplined engineer (I thought), I created a new sandbox account to test this API integraton against. Ran the thing like 100 times, fixing bugs along the way.

About an hour later, I got a message from our CEO informing me that all of our customers had been getting hundreds of email invitations to the support desk.

Whoops.

Turns out, sandbox wasn’t so sandboxed. How could I have known?

This lesson is marrow-deep for me. Always, always double check external services (and development vs. production email configuration for good measure) when running them with production data. (Better yet, don’t use production data.)

Luckily I got ahead of the problem and proactively wrote out an email that could go out to the affected customers. My manager appreciated that and, honestly, who hasn’t made a dumb mistake like this early in their career? I’m appreciative that they were so supportive.

Check and double check everything when using external services.

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