I just received a complaint from a user of the website I maintain. Should I do anything?
- by Chris
I was sent sent a large wall of text from a user of the website I maintain at my job. They are clearly upset for having to deal with a horribly outdated web application that has not seen any serious updates in over 6+ years. No refactoring has been done, the code quality is terrible, the security unchecked, policy compliances ignored, in addition to being ugly and frankly embarrassing. Keep in mind this is a small business but the website is used by hundreds daily. I'm one of two programmers there, and I've been working there for two years. This person says they are about my age (22) and understand technology (but can't use proper grammar).
The complaint mentioned awkward pages and actions on the website, but they don't even have a clue as to the depth of the flaws in this website. Now, I would love to honestly tell them that there's a lot wrong with this company and that this application was built when we were in high school. And that while it's not my fault that the website is terrible, I'm the one in position to fix it. But on the other hand, I could just say nothing and ignore it.
Would doing this publicly have any advantage to future employees (showing integrity) or would it just be a completely pointless mistake? Odds are, even if I respond only that one person will ever read it. Regardless, I'm probably just going to ignore it and continue starting my project to refactor the website.
